lated a culture which incorporated and formed
a curious compound of elements drawn from different countries and people.

While investigation, moreover, reveals that the conquest of Phoenicia and
intermittent periods of warfare and persecution directed against the
religion and democratic principles of its people, must have furnished the
most powerful incentive for them to extend their voyages of discovery and
seek distant lands where colonies might be established. It is obvious
that, if safe places of refuge were found, their existence would remain a
secret and that, in course of time, a complete isolation of distant
colonies would result.

Considering that it would be premature to formulate a final conclusion on
a subject which demands so much more investigation, I merely observe here
that, as far as I can see, the conditions which existed and survive
amongst the aborigines of America would be fully accounted for by the
assumption that they received certain elements of culture and civilization
from Mediterranean seafarers who, at widely separated, critical periods of
Old World history, may have transported refugees and would-be colonists or
founders of ideal republics and "divine polities" to different parts of
the hidden or divine land of "the West," the existence of which was known
by tradition to the Egyptian priesthood.

Under such circumstances it is apparent how the American Continent could
have become an isolated area of preservation where archaic and primitive
forms of civilization, religious cult, symbolism and industries, drawn at
different epochs, from various, more or less important centres or from the
outposts of Old World culture, would be handed down, transformed through
the active and increasing influence of the native elements. The latter
must always have been markedly predominant since it must be assumed, if at
all, that the number of individuals who reached America, and the
subsequent duration of their lives, must have been extremely limited. What
is more, as Montezuma related that the colonists, from whom he descended,
married native women, it is obvious that, from the outset, foreign and
native influences were combined.

There was one main element, however, underlying both foreign and native
civilizations, which formed the basis of both, united and made them as
one, namely, the recognition of fixed immutable laws governing the
universe, attained, by both races, by long-continued observation of
Po