into the Gulf of Mexico.

What is more, ancient well-known tradition asserts that the culture-hero
Kukulcan-Quetzalcoatl, with his followers, came to Mexico from the East
(_via_ Yucatan) and told the natives of their distant home, named
Tlapallan and Huehue tlapallan which, translated, mean "the red land" and
"the great ancient red land." Native American tradition unquestionably and
unanimously ascribes to single individuals of aged and venerable aspect,
or leaders of small bands of men and women of an alien race, the peaceable
introduction of a definite plan of civilization, identical in its elements
with that known to have existed in India, Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria from
time immemorial, and said to have been spread to these countries by the
Phoenicians.

Native tradition, therefore, is seen unanimously to controvert the
independent development of the cosmical schemes of government and most
advanced forms of civilization which prevailed in America at the Columbian
period. This, of course, in no wise excludes the existence of purely
native people, with a certain degree of civilization, more rudimentary in
form, founded on impressive natural phenomena, which the natives had
always been in a position to observe for themselves.

In order to obtain an insight into conditions which might have determined
and affected maritime intercourse with distant America, let us now make a
rapid survey of the history of the ancient civilizations of the Old World.
This reveals, in the first case, the undeniable fact (one of deepest
significance in the light of the present investigation) that the period of
a general stirring of men's minds, in countries where pole-star worship
had prevailed from time immemorial, exactly coincides with the period to
which I alluded on p. 43, during which there ceased to be a brilliantly
conspicuous and perfectly immovable pole-star in the northern heavens.

From Mr. Hinckley Allen's work (p. 454), I have since learned that
astronomers have closely determined this period, and that Miss Clerke
writes of this: "The entire millennium before the Christian era may count
for an interregnum as regards pole-stars. Alpha Draconis had ceased to
exercise that office; and Alruccabah had not yet assumed it." Prof. A. H.
Sayce tells us that the Phoenician pilots steered by the pole-star in
remotest antiquity, and it is a matter of history that "Pytheas of
Massilia, the bold navigator (died about 285 B.C.), showed the