fidence, that it was known to
many learned men in ancient times that there were settlements upon the
continent of America, and that the dreams of the Western Islands of the
Blest, and of the gardens of the Hesperides, rested upon most
substantial facts. Modern scholars, looking at the matter casually, have
allowed themselves to conclude that, because these discoveries were made
at a very early period in the history of the world, by a people who were
unable to build their ships according to the rules of modern science,
and were compeled[TN-8] to navigate stormy oceans without the aid of
steam, and probably without the aid of the mariner's compass, could
never have navigated wide seas and stormy oceans.

But how baseless this idea is found to be, when we come to see how
easily and successfully the Phoenician people traversed northern,
western and eastern oceans, and brought home the products of the whole
world to enrich themselves and the peoples among whom Providence had
fixed their destinies! And how strangely such a suggestion sounds when
addressed to the understanding of peoples who have seen again and again
the boisterous Atlantic traversed from continent to continent by three
men, two men, and even a single man, in an open boat! So that the origin
of this people, who were so conspicuous at one time in Central America,
is certainly found to have been of the Phoenicians from Tyre, Sidon or
Aridas or from Tharshish or Carthage or the settlements towards the
west. The settlement of these countries must have been very early, and
their location must have been guarded by all the pains and penalties so
graphically described in the ancient authors which we have quoted.
Intercourse with Central America from the east must have ceased before
the discovery of letters, for nowhere that we have discovered throughout
the extent of the American settlements has a letter been found of any
form whether Cuniform, Greek, Roman, Hebrew or Phoenician. These western
settlers must have been entirely ignorant of Egyptian hieroglyphics,
for the figures upon their walls show the invention of a system of
hieroglyphics more complicated than anywhere else discovered, and which
no Champollion has yet been able to translate. The human mind was not
dormant here but its discoveries are utterly lost to mankind. It will be
asked what has become of this Central American population who wrought
the works in question? This can only be answered from conjectur