from Asia, who finally obtained possession of the entire North American continent. 3. The Irish, under Brandon, A. D. 545, were the first to introduce European civilization and to make the first European settlements. Entering the Mississippi from the Gulf, and ascending that stream, as we shall show, to its junction with the Ohio, they occupied the banks of these rivers seven years. Brandon was fol lowed by Ernulphus and Buo, two Irish monks, with their associates in 827, and afterwards by Madoc of Wales in 1170. Their settlements ex tended as far as Carolina and Florida. The region from the Ohio to the Gulf and from the Mississippi. to the Atlantic was generally called and known as Hwtra-mannaland or White Man's Land, and Ireland edh Miklah, or "Ireland the Greater." The Norse voyages and explorations were confined to the New England coast. The object of this paper is to establish these propositions by unquestionable authority. I. THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS. In view of the result of the recent deep-sea soundings prosecuted by the United States and other governments in the Atlantic, it is not easy to comprehend the incredulity with which any account of the lost Atlantis was formerly received. But that, upon the space where now the Atlantic rolls in broad, unbroken billows, and great meadows of sea-weed mantle its restless bosom, between Amer ica and Africa, only a few miles outside the pillars of Hercules, there formerly existed an island as large as Africa, with a great continent, none other than that now called North and South America, beyond it, and that this island and continent were known to the ancients, and was the seat of an Empire whose sway extended east over northern Africa and the Meditteranean to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and westwardly over North and South America to the islands of the Pacific, is proven by the same evidence as that upon which rests many of the most important discoveries of modern science. The tradition was known to Seneca and Aristotle, and was told by the priests of Psenophis, Sonitus, Heliopolis and Sais to Solon, B. C. 570 [Weise Discoveries America], when he was in Egypt. He communicated it to the father of Critias, who was the informant of Socrates. Plato committed it to writing in the Critias and Timæus. The catastrophe it described occurred nine thousand years before the days of Solon. After describing the great extent of the Atlantic, these priests added that "the Atlantic sea was at one time navigated, and had an island in the midst of it which fronted that mouth you call the Pillars of Hercules, larger than Libya and Asia Minor together. There was a passage thence for the travelers of that day to the rest of the islands, and from those islands to an opposite continent. What is within the mouth mentioned (the Mediterranean) is only a bay with a narrow entrance; but that sea, the Atlantic, is indeed a true ocean, and the land which entirely surrounds it may truly and correctly be called a continent." "Until recently," says Mr. Short (in North Americans of Antiquity 142), "the mere expression of belief in the former existence of Atlantis has been the signal for criticism, and has called forth the smile of pity, if not contempt. Such, however, is no longer true, since successful scientific investigation, consisting chiefly of deep sea soundings, and the study of the fauna and flora of the opposite shores of the Atlantic, call for the respectful attention of all who are interested in the ancient history of this continent. Whether the Atlantida, who threatened to overthrow the earliest Greek and Egyptian states, but who were swallowed up by the sea upon the engulfment of their island, were the inhabitants of these ridges discovered in the ocean by the Dolphin and the Challenger must, for the present at least, remain in doubt, though strong probabilities point to the conclusion that they were." Ibid 505. Mr. Bradford (in American Antiquities 221) says: "In any event, after a fair and impartial examination of all these circumstances, it seems extremely difficult to regard the account of Plato as a fabrication. Its accordance with the ancient mythology and facts now well ascertained, and its allusion to a Western Conti nent at that time generally known, oppose such a proposition. If it was the creation of the Greek or Egyptian imagination, surely fancy Lever formed a truer fiction, nor has modern discovery disclosed a more striking coincidence." The truth is, that America, instead of being "a New World" presented by Columbus to Spain, as claimed in the pretentious inscription on his monument at Seville, and carved in marble by Persico at Washington, is the oldest of the continents. "First born among them," says Agassiz (Historical Sketches, cited in Bryant's U. S. 12), "though so much later in cultivation and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the 'New World.' Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, and hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped. all the earth beside. While Europe was represented only by islands, rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the Far West. When the tall summits of the Himalaya chain, the loftiest on the globe, had just begun to be discovered above the primeval ocean, and were still being rocked in the volcanic cradle of their infancy by the creative hand of physical nature, the Palisades of the Hudwere hoary with age." These stirring words of the great geologist son preceded for many years the grand discovery of the late Prof. E. Emmons -formerly of Albany, in this Statewhile geologist to the State of North Carolina. Among the sedimentary rocks of Montgomery county, in that State, he found those famous Paleatroches, which, in a letter to him I have seen, Sir Charles Lyell declares to be "the earliest evidence of organized life upon this planet, the forerunners of man and harbingers of that immortal faculty which connects him with celestial beings." And surely it was fitting that, close by Mecklenberg, in that good old North State where the cradle of the Republic was rocked by her statesmen, and the dust of her heroes and of empire commingle, the great New Yorker she employed should discover the earliest evidences of terrestrial life to be also entombed. COLUMBUS NOT THE FIRST DISCOVERER. Col. Barclay Kennon, formerly of the U. S. North Pacific Surveying Expedition, says (Short N. A. A., 509, note 2): "From the result of the most accurate scientific observations, it is evident that the voyage from China to America can be made without being out of sight of land more than a few hours at a time. There is, in fact, an almost unbroken chain connecting the Asiatic continent with the peninsula of Kamschatka. At the North Pacific all doubts vanish in the presence of the most favorable conditions for a migration from the one continent to the other. "The weather in Berings Strait, though cold even in summer, is not nearly so cold as the winter of Japan. Sir Charles Lyell says Berings Strait happens to agree singularly with the Strait of Dover, the difference in depth being not more than three or four feet. "With this statement before us," continues Mr. Short, "while standing on the deck of a vessel, midway between Calais and Dover, with the shores of England and France in full view, we felt as never before-how absurd is the opinion which has been advanced more than once, that no general migration was likely to have taken place across Bering Strait." Ib., 510. "It is then impossible to approximate the period of the world's history in which the migration must have taken place. No doubt it was in n a remote age, before the old world people had developed their present or even historical peculiarities and types of civilization." Ib., 511. Prof. Grote thinks the first migration took place "in the tertiary period of Pliocene time, and the subsequent advance of the ice period, cutting off, all communication with the rest of the world until recent times, produced a modification of the race, and that man retired with the glacier on its return to the North, where we now see his descendants in the Eskimo." 512. Gallatin (in 1st Am. Ethnol. So. Trans., 158) says: "That America was first peopled by Asiatic tribes is highly probable, and after the lapse of several thousand years, the memory of that ancient emigration was lost." W. H. Dall says: "I see no reason for disputing the hypothesis that America was peopled from Asia originally, and that there were successive waves of emigration." (1, Contribs. North Am. Ethnol., 95.) In determining the epoch of the first emigration to this continent, "we are carried back," says Bradford (Am. Antiq., 336), "to that period when mankind were first scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth;" and Prof. Short, summing up, says: "A few years ago writers dated North American history from the discoveries made by Columbus and his immediate successors. Now, they go back to the Northmen for a starting point. May they not be pushed even farther back, and the more ancient history of America receive the attention of the historiographer?" Ibid, 515. Following up this hint, I adopt the classification of Sir John Lubbock (Prehistoric Times, 515). "The original, or at least the pre-Columbian, inhabitants of North America," says he, "fall naturally into three divisions: 1st-The Eskimo in the North; 2d-The Indian tribes in the center; and 3d-The comparatively civilized Mexicans in the South." I think it plain that we would have avoided many-probably all-our errors in American archæology and upon the subject of the origin of the Aborigines, so called, if we had not attempted to trace them to a common origin, Sir John's division being as clearly distinguishable as are those of the peo-ples, nearer of kin, who occupy the British islands. Let us examine them separately. 1. The Eskimo. These are unhesitatingly assigned to a class by themselves. "They are," says Prof. Grote, "the descendants and representatives of the first occupants, the primitive red men of the plain of Shinar, who, when mankind were scattered, came here and found the continent uninhabited." 2. The Mexicans, according to Herbert Bancroft (5, Native Am. Races, 157), “are certainly descended from a highly civilized people. Far back in the misty past we catch traditional glimpses of a mighty aboriginal empire in these tropical regions. Palenque, Copan and their companions in ruin, are the wonderful material monuments of this ancient people and epoch. They prove them to be no mere creation of the imagination." According to Catlin and Bancroft (2, Catlin, 231-235; 5, Bancroft N. R., 30-33, 51-77)-and, I believe, all the authorities concur in their opinion to this extent-the Indian tribes of the central parts of the continent differ from the other two in this, that they are a mixed race. Catlin distinctly admits the Welsh mixture, while Bancroft concedes at least three or four, viz.: Tribes from Northern gines, ed to n, Sir dis peo. - the hem hese lass ays and ts, of re he X ft Asia, the Chinese and Japanese, the The claim of the Irish to have col- 66 A certain Fernando de Ulmo, of discovered by the Irish monk, Brandon, several centuries before. Had this expedition proceeded upon the track proposed by De Ulmo, he would have landed in Carolina." Mr. Mansfield further states that this country of Brandon's was laid down on the chart of Toscanelli and all the other charts of Columbus' time. In the extraordinary work of Cardinal Pedro de Alliaco, entitled Imago del Mundi, published in 1410, the writer advances an opinion, founded on the traditions current at that time, that a great sea extends between Spain and the Indies, quæ principia Orientis et occidentis sunt prope, cum mare parva ea separet ex alteraparte terræ. A copy of this work, Mr. Mansfield says, is in the library in Seville, with marginal notes in the handwriting of the great navigator. In the Bibliotheque Imperiale at Paris there are said, by Mr. Donnelly (Atlantis, 420), to be eleven MSS. of great antiquity in the Latin language, relating to the ancient history and geography of the globe. In all of them reference is made to this legend of Brandon of Clonfert, an aged Irish monk and voyager, who, in A. D. 545, left the bay of Brandon, on the coast of Ireland, ever since so called in honor of the event, and sailed across the Atlantic in a southwestern direction, searching for a great continent in the west, the memory of which had been prese.ved from early times in the annals of Ireland (Bancroft, 5, N. A. |