tion than some of more recent birth, America, as far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World.” "America," says Ritter, "although it repeats the contrasts of the Old World, yet the course of its mountain chains is not from east to west, but from north to south. Its sea coast best endowed with harbors and islands is on the eastern side, and so turned toward the civilization of the Old World. The Gulf Stream, which may be called the great commercial highway of nations, brought both of the continents bordering on the North Atlantic into direct connection. North America was, therefore, destined to be discovered by Europeans, and not by Asiatics. Asia could easily have transferred a part of its population to America, in consequence of the proximity of their shores at Behring's Straits. But the sea coast of North America is so richly furnished with harbors and islands, that it readily attracted European civilization. The gentle slopes of the American continent offered a most favorable field to Europeans, allowing, as they did, civilization to penetrate without obstruction every portion of the land. Nature, too, has shown us, by giving to America river systems which run northward to the numerous groups of islands and peninsulas of the Polar Sea, that America was destined even more than Europe to send civilization to the northern portions of the globe."*

The North American continent extends from the twentyfourth to the forty-ninth degree of north latitude, and from the sixty-sixth to the one hundred and twenty-fourth degree of west longitude: its area is more than five sixths that of Europe, and more than ten times that of Great Britain and France united: there are seven thousand miles of eastern shore line, thirty-four hundred southern and twenty-two hundred western; while the northern lake line is twenty-two hundred miles. Climate, soil, avocation, and productions are, by this affluent space, adapted to the constitution, the character, and the necessity of each European nationality so that

* "Geographical Studies," by Professor Carl Ritter, of Berlin, translated by W. L. Gage.

the German vinedresser, the Italian musician, the Spanish planter, the French modiste-Pole, Russian, Swede, Swiss, and Sicilian-the professor, merchant, man of science, agriculturist, tough rustic, delicate artiste, radical writer, proselyting priest, or cosmopolitan philosopher-with any sagacity, self-respect, or urbanity, can readily find the physical conditions or the social facilities, the climate, business, and community, the scopes, position, and prosperity adapted to his temperament and faculty. The Spanish, French, and colonial history of America-the national epoch with its statistics of navigation, population, taxation, education, public lands, railways, manufactures, patents, canals, telegraphs, legislation, municipal rule, emigration, jurisprudence, trade, and government—and, finally, the causes and significance of the present rebellion— are each and all elements of a vast historical development, wherein a Christian philosopher can easily trace a consecutive significance and Divine superintendence of humanity.

Travellers of ordinary intelligence and observation are not unfrequently lured into vague but rational conjectures as to the history of races by the resemblance so often apparent between the memorials of widely separated and most ancient people. An American familiar with the trophies of an Egyptian museum, who has examined the contents of a Western mound, visited an Etruscan city, like Volterra, Druidical remains in Britain, or compared the porcelain idols of Burmah with those found in South and Central America, will be tempted to follow with credulity the ingenious speculations of antiquarian savans who argue from symbolic coincidences that an identical language and worship, in remote ages, linked in a common bond the world's inhabitants; or that similar trophies of faith found in Odin stones and Hindu temples, in Etrurian sepulchres and Mississippi tumuli, at least, suggest a more ancient emigration to America than is claimed by the advocates of Norse discoveries. It is but needful to read the history of the serpent symbol and the recent controversies as to unity of races, to find in such ethnological speculations a remarkable basis of fact; whether or not we admit the prob

ability so confidently urged that a Chinese priest and a fifthcentury Buddhist missionary visited this continent via the Pacific, and reported thereof, ages before Christopher Columbus dreamed of a new world. In fact, the early history and traditions relating to the discovery and casual settlements, is one of the most remarkable chapters in the annals of the world-affording, on the one hand, the greatest scope for imagination, and, on the other, the most suggestive material for philosophical inference and elucidation. How early and in what manner the nearest points of contact between America and the rest of the world, in the far northwest, were first crossed at Behring's Straits, gives room for bold conjecture: ethnologists, archæologists, and antiquarians have broached numerous theories and established curious facts to prove that the " new world" of Columbus was known and partially colonized long before that intrepid navigator heard the thrilling cry of "land!" from the mast head of the Pinta : not only those primitive explorers the Chinese and Japanese, but the ancient Phoenicians, Norman colonists from Greenland, Irish saints, and Russian overland expeditions have been confidently traced and sometimes authenticated. Naturalists have, with subtile knowledge, pointed out how the secret of another continent was whispered by the voice of Nature, seeds borne on the currents of the air, and plants on those of the sea; scholars have culled from old Latin and Italian poets intimations of the existence of a hemisphere unexplored; and ingenious observers have appealed to stone hearths, like those of Denmark, found at Cape Cod, moss-grown clefts in aged trees, brass arrow heads, and copper axes, to evidence a longlost colony.

The Icelandic navigators are supposed to have made voyages to Vinland, on the southern coast of New England, five centuries before Columbus. The Welsh, too, claim a share in this remote exploration of America. In the preface to his poem of "Madoc," Southey says of the hero, he "abandoned his barbarous country, and sailed away to the west, in search of some better resting place. The land which he discovered

pleased him; he left there part of his people, and went back to Wales for a fresh supply of adventurers, with whom he again set sail, and was heard of no more. Strong evidence has been adduced that he reached America, and that his posterity exist there to this day." And a venerable scholar, of our own country, observes that

"Madoc is stated to have been a son of Owen Gwynedd, Prince, or, as he is often styled, King of Wales. His father's death is assigned to the year 1169, and the commencement of his own voyage to the succeeding year. I quote an authority which has apparently been overlooked, in citing Warrington's History of Wales. He writes: 'About this time [1170] Madoc, seeing the contention which agitated the fiery spirit of his brothers, with a courage equal to theirs, but far more liberally directed, gave himself up to the danger and uncertainty of seas hitherto unexplored. He is said to have embarked with a few ships; sailing west, and leaving Ireland to the north, he traversed the ocean till he arrived by accident upon the coast of America. Pleased with its appearance, he left there a great part of his people, and returning for a fresh supply, he was joined by many adventurers, both men and women; who, encouraged by a flattering description of that country, and sick of the disorders which reigned in their own, were desirous of seeking an asylum in the wilds of America.'

"Some, indeed, have regarded the whole subject as unworthy of investigation. But when we perceive it asserted, that individuals have seen in the possession of Indians, as we call them, books or rolls written on parchment, and carefully wrapped up, though they could not be read; and the people who possessed them, though but a fragment of our Indian population, showing a fairer skin than the ordinary tribes, and hair and beard, occasionally, of reddish color-we must think the subject worth some further inquiry; and I cannot but express the hope that the inquiry may be pursued."*

Carl Christian Rafn, a Danish archæologist, in his work on American antiquities, published at Copenhagen in 1837, endeavors to prove that America was not only discovered by the Scandinavians in the tenth, but that during the four succeeding centuries they made frequent voyages thither, and

*"Address before the American Antiquarian Society, at their Annual Meeting, October, 1863," by Rev. William Jenks, D. D.

had settlements in what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Availing himself of these researches, our eminent countryman Henry Wheaton enriched his "History of the Northmen "--a work, like the author's Treatise on International Law, of European reputation-the fruit of studies carried on in the midst of important and admirably fulfilled diplomatic duties.

Alexander von Humboldt, on his way from Mexico via Cuba, arrived at Philadelphia in 1804, and was cordially received at Washington by Jefferson; his sojourn in the United States, however, was quite brief: of his views in regard to the ancient memorials found in the American continents the historian Prescott observes: "Humboldt is a true philosopher, divested of local and national prejudices; like most truly learned men, he is cautious and modest in his deductions, and though he assembles very many remarkable coincidences between the Old World and the New, in their institutions, notions, habits, etc., yet he does not infer that the New World was peopled from the Old, much less from one particular nation, as most rash speculators have done." *

From the vague but romantic conjecture of the Egyptian legend which Plato repeated in regard to the island of Atlantis, to the dim traditions which place the wonderful Vinland of the Scandinavian navigators on the shores of Labrador; from the mysterious charm that invested the newly discovered isles of the tropics and found immortal expression in Shakspeare's Tempest, to the curious ethnological speculations which recognize in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley relics of a civilization anterior to the American Indians; from the fabulous lures, like the fountain of youth, that attracted Southern Europeans to Florida, to the stern crises of opinion which drove English Puritans to the bleak coast of New England-the earliest descriptions of and associations with the country, now known as the United States of America, are deeply tinctured with visionary legends and traditional fables; to

* Ticknor's "Life of Prescott," p. 165.