ether wise or aberrant, grow up under
apparently dissimilar circumstances, circumcision forming no
exception.[7] Dr. Arnold leaves too much to chance. It is hardly likely
that the similarity that existed between the architecture of the
Phoenicians and the Central Americans, as evinced in their arches; in
the beginning of the century on the 26th of February; the advancement
and interest taken in astronomical science; the coexistence of pyramids
in Egypt and Central America; that five Armenian cities should have
their namesakes in Central America, should all be a matter of accident.
The historiographer of the Canary Islands, M. Benshalet, considers that
those islands once formed a part of the great continent to its west;
this has been verified by the discovery of many sculptured symbols,
similar in the Canaries and on the shores of Lake Superior, as well as
by the discovery of a mummy in the Canaries with sandals whose exact
counterparts were found in Central America.[8] A compound word used to
signify the Great Spirit being found identical in the Welsh and Mandan
languages, each requiring five distinct sounds to pronounce, words as
intricate as the passwords of secret societies, can hardly be said to be
the result of chance.[9] There must, at some remote period, have existed
some communication between the ancestors of these Missouri Mandans and
the shores of ancient Armorica; the ancestors of these Mandans may have
then been living farther to the east; they even may have then been a
tribe of since lost Atlantis; but the analogy, not only in regard to the
word just mentioned,--_Maho-peneta_, of the Welsh and Mandan,--but in
the similarity of the pronouns of both languages, and the existence of
the idea of the counterpart of the sacred white bull of the Egyptians
being found among the Dakotas, or Sioux, all point to the fact that
these people, in common with the rest of the Americans, originally came
from the East; from whence came their languages, manners, customs,
rites, and what civilization they possessed, among which circumcision
has, through the mist of centuries, held its own in some shape or other.

That some terrible catastrophe occurred to divide the hemispheres is
evident; the Western World remaining stationary in its civilization and
retaining the customs and rites of the times as evidence of their
origin. With this view of the case, the existence of circumcision as
found among the inhabitants of the West can ea