285 
I. This alternative, however, is by no means clear. Hero- 
dotus records a voyage of the Phoenicians, made in the seventh 
century before Christ, around the whole continent of Africa. 
Pliny states the same thing of the Carthaginians. These 
accounts, if true, — and there seems no good reason why we 
should doubt them, — must not only have involved very pro- 
longed sea voyages, but have not improbably brought the 
voyagers into contact with the islands of Madeira, the Canaries, 
Cape Yerde, and Azores. At all events, they upset the notion 
of those worthy Dominican friars at Salamanca who imagined 
that, in remote ages of the world, oceanic migrations of any 
great length were impossible. It may be replied that these 
were only coasting voyages, from which no argument can be 
drawn in relation to the open navigation of the Atlantic or 
Pacific. If so, a clearer and more satisfactory inference upon 
that subject might be drawn from the discovery and colo- 
nization of Greenland in the year a.d. 985, or thereabouts — a 
fact which is of strictly historical authority, and is actually 
confirmed by the existence of Runic inscriptions in that 
country. From this fact it will be seen that before the time of 
Columbus, the Northern Atlantic Ocean must have been 
traversed by Scandinavian sailors, and the mainland of 
America safely reached. Still more to the point is the 
following fact. In the year a.d. 1499, a portion of the 
Portuguese fleet was carried across the Atlantic by the equa- 
torial current, resulting in the discovery of Brazil. And to 
show that these accidental driftings have not been always 
from east to west, but sometimes in the opposite direction, 
let me adduce two more recent cases of the same kind, — - 
instances in which vessels have made long and dangerous 
voyages both over the Pacific and the Atlantic. 
About the year a.d. 1750, for example, a canoe, which is 
now preserved in the museum at Aberdeen, was picked up by 
a ship on the Aberdeen coast, with an Eskimo in it, still 
alive, surrounded by all his fishing-tackle * — a circumstance 
which shows how easily oceanic currents may convey even un- 
civilized man across vast tracts of water. Similar cases have 
happened in the Pacific Ocean. In the year a.d. 1833, a 
Japanese junk was wrecked on the coast of Oregon, and some 
of its crew were subsequently rescued from captivity among 
the Indians of the Hudson's Bay Territory. Evidences exist, 
also, of a remote system of oceanic navigation among the 
Polynesians. Pickering, of the United States Exploring 
Expedition, says, “ The Tonga people are known to hold 
x 2 
* Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, vol. i., p. 148. 
