PART III.-AMERICA. CHAPTER I. THE NEW WORLD. Say who, when age on age had roll'd away, ROGERS. THE course of our history now leads us from the continents whereon the scenes of ancient story have been chiefly enacted, to that vast portion of the globe which still emphatically receives the name of the New World. Our province, however, is to deal, not with the new, but with the ancient relics of our race, and of these the American continents are no less prolific than those which have been from earliest times the seat of empire and of human action. Few questions have excited greater interest, or led to more varied controversy, since the dis covery of the New World, than the probable source of its first colonists. Theories of the most extravagant and improbable nature have been advanced to account for the peopling of a continent separated by impassable oceans from the ancient scenes of human habitation, and yet to reconcile it with the scriptural fact, that the single human pair who inhabited the garden of Eden, were the parents of the whole human race, "made of one blood on all the face of the earth.” One among the several theories advanced has aimed at making of the Red Indian race, the lost Ten Tribes, whose restoration to their ancient land the prophecies of Scripture are thought clearly to foretell. Others looking to the simplest and most natural source of population for the New World, have pointed to the facilities offered by the near approach of the North American continent to that of Asia, at Bhering's Straits, for the passage of wanderers from the Old World to the New, or for their boats and canoes being driven by chance upon the further shores. Recent literary discoveries have put the question beyond all possibility of dispute, that the New World had been known by Europeans, and visited and colonized, centuries before the discovery of the Indian Isles by Columbus; who, it will be remembered, never landed on the American continent. The Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen, published in 1837, a work of great learning and research, entitled "Antiquitates Americanæ," designed to furnish evidence of the discovery of the American continent by the Norsemen several centuries before the voyages of the Spanish discoverers. These Danish antiquaries have entered into lengthened correspondence with distinguished American scholars and men of science, on this subject, the result of which has been the discovery of some curious traces of these older Scandinavian colonists, of whose pre-occupation of the North American continent, upwards of four centuries before it was rediscovered by the Spanish followers of Columbus, and by other European explorers, it is no longer possible to doubt. In one of the communications furnished to the antiquaries of Copenhagen by the secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society, it is remarked :-" In the western parts of our country may still be seen numerous and extensive mounds, similar to the tumuli met with in Scandinavia, Tartary, and Russia; also the remains of fortifications that must have required for their construction a degree of industry, labour, and skill, as well as an advancement in the arts, that never characterized any of the Indian tribes. Various articles of pottery are found in them, with the method of manufacturing which they were entirely unacquainted. But, above all, many rocks inscribed with unknown characters, apparently of very ancient origin, have been discovered, scattered through different parts of the country, such as it was impossible so to engrave without the aid of iron or other hard metallic instruments." Of several of these inscribed rocks engravings are given in the Danish Society's publication, and while some are in rude and unknown characters and hieroglyphics, others are unquestionably engraved in Runic characters, corresponding to the ancient monuments of Northern Europe. But what appears at first still more extraordinary, the same traces of the ancient dawn and slow progression in the arts of civilization, are discoverable in the New as in the Old World. Historians and archæologists may speculate and theorise, but the antiquities of the New World occupy a place in their investigations altogether apart from every other branch of their studies, though the very recent date of the discovery of the great continents of North and South America only renders more interesting whatever is calculated to throw light on their previous history. The modern archaeologists, reasoning from the discovery that in nearly every primitive state of society, where the arts of civilization have been unknown, it is found that sharpened flints and stones have supplied the place of metallic weapons and implements, has arrived at the conclusion, that nearly all the most civilized nations of the world have passed through this rude stage of the arts, to which he gives the name of the stone period. But America has its stone period as well as Europe and Asia. Tumuli, the burial mounds of ancient races, are found in immense numbers in the great valley of the Mississippi, in the plains of Mexico, on the banks of the Hudson, and amid the Canadian forests, containing spearheads and adzes of flint and stone, and urns of rudelybaked clay, not greatly dissimilar to those found in the barrows of England, or in Denmark and Brittany. This, however, can hardly be regarded as furnishing conclusive evidence of early intercourse or a common origin, since it only exhibits the relics of that primitive stage of society through which the most civilized nations of antiquity appear to have passed. The student of another science, that of ethnology, reasoning from equally satisfactory data, arrives at the conclusion, that the American continent must have been peopled by diverse races, and from different points. In Greenland, and along the northern coasts, within the arctic circle, he finds a race closely corresponding to the Finnish race of the north of Europe. In the temperate zones, the red Indian still occupies many districts to which the enterprise of the white man has not yet penetrated, and he presents affinities most closely allied to the Mongolian race of the Old World, yet with very remarkable and essential peculiarities, indicating the development of a new division of the great human family. To the south again are the Mexicans, the descendants of that singular race among whom such remarkable traces of high civilization were found by the Spaniards of the fifteenth century, associated with the most cruel and barbarous rites, and with the most degrading supersti tions. The history of the discovery of America by Columbus is familiar to all readers. Long had the ardent genius of him who was destined to reunite the severed families of the human race, to contend with the prejudices and ignorance of his generation. Learned churchmen were prepared to prove not only that the discovery was impracticable, and an impossibility; but that even the very proposition of it was impious and heretical. Rogers has translated a remarkable Spanish poem, found in a fragmentary state, among other manuscripts, in an old religious house near Palos, situated on an island formed by the river Tinto, and dedicated to our Lady of La Rabida. "The subject," says its English translator, "is a voyage the most memorable in the annals of mankind." The writer describes himself as having accompanied Columbus ere he withdrew to the cloisters of La Rabida; but he embodies in his curious poem the traditions of a later period, and a reverence for the great discoverer which was manifested by few of those who shared in the great work due to his indomitable genius. He thus pictures the remarkable discovery of a light on shore, during the night, by which Columbus first became assured of the vicinity of the unknown land : "Chosen of men! 'Twas thine, at noon of night, His instincts, passions, say, how like our own? So sings again the old Castilian monk, who with the great commander beheld the sun rise on that New World, on the morning of Friday, 12th of October 1492. When |