a primitive craft of
prehistoric times might have been driven across the Atlantic or the
Pacific, and might have landed its occupants still alive and well on
the shores of America. To prove this we need only remember that history
records many such voyages. It has often happened that Japanese junks
have been blown clear across the Pacific. In 1833 a ship of this sort
was driven in a great storm from Japan to the shores of the Queen
Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia. In the same way a
fishing smack from Formosa, which lies off the east coast of China, was
once carried in safety across the ocean to the Sandwich Islands.
Similar long voyages have been made by the natives of the South Seas
against their will, under the influence of strong and continuous winds,
and in craft no better than their open canoes. Captain Beechey of the
Royal Navy relates that in one of his voyages in the Pacific he picked
up a canoe filled with natives from Tahiti who had been driven by a
gale of westerly wind six hundred miles from their own island. It has
happened, too, from time to time, since the discovery of America, that
ships have been forcibly carried all the way across the Atlantic. A
glance at the map of the world shows us that the eastern coast of
Brazil juts out into the South Atlantic so far that it is only fifteen
hundred miles distant from the similar projection of Africa towards the
west. The direction of the trade winds in the South Atlantic is such
that it has often been the practice of sailing vessels bound from
England to South Africa to run clear across the ocean on a long stretch
till within sight of the coast of Brazil before turning towards the
Cape of Good Hope. All, however, that we can deduce from accidental
voyages, like that of the Spaniard, Alvarez de Cabral, across the ocean
is that even if there had been no other way for mankind to reach
America they could have landed there by ship from the Old World. In
such a case, of course, the coming of man to the American continent
would have been an extremely recent event in the long history of the
world. It could not have occurred until mankind had progressed far
enough to make vessels, or at least boats of a simple kind.

But there is evidence that man had appeared on the earth long before
the shaping of the continents had taken place. Both in Europe and
America the buried traces of primitive man are vast in antiquity, and
carry us much further back in tim