who affirms that " at or about the time of the commencement of the Christian era, voyages from Africa and Spain into the " and holds Atlantic ocean were both frequent and celebrated ; that " there is strong probability that the

Romans and Carthagenians, even 300 B. C., were well acquainted with the exist ence of this country," adding that there are " tokens of the

presence of the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Carthagenians, The story of Madoc's voyage in many parts of the continent." 1 1 70, has been repeated by every writer upon the subject, and actual traces of Welsh colonization are affirmed

to America, in

to have been discovered in the language and customs of a tribe

of Indians living on the Missouri. that " America

was

Then the

fact

is

stated

by some Norwegians," who made

visited

a settlement in Greenland, in the tenth century. Priest, in his American Antiquities, states that his observations had led

him " to the conclusion that the two great continents, Asia and America, were peopled by similar races of men."

Men equally It is not necessary to add to this catalogue. learned with those whose opinions have been quoted, see no way of an opinion that America received her

obstacle in the

population as she did her peculiar trees, and plants, and animals, and birds. The geologist examines the relics of the west, and

where imagination fashions artificial walls, he sees but crumbs of decaying sandstone, clinging like the remains of mortar to blocks of greenstone that rested on it ; discovers in parallel intrenchments a trough that subsiding waters have ploughed through the centre of a ridge, and explains the tessellated pavement to be but a layer of pebbles aptly joined by water ; and, examining the finds