than had rewarded the search of his predecessors. Although these hopes proved ultimately illusory and even disastrous, yet they impelled to high exertions, and developed great characters, for the display of which America became one of the grand modern theatres.

Through the agency of these causes, in the course of a few centuries, a new form has been impressed on the whole of the western continent. It has been • filled with European colonists, before whom the natives have disappeared, or sought shelter in its ruder and remoter tracts. The native race of wandering savages has been succeeded by another, the most civilized and improved on the globe. This new race, by transporting into America the arts and industry of Europe, fit its immense surface to yield a mass of subsistence, and to support a population, incalculably greater than was formerly possible, or than yet exists. Its people are, therefore, in that state of rapid increase which always ensues when the means of subsistence are ample. There is every presumption, that, in a very few centuries, the whole of the western world will be as highly peopled as Europe. America will then be the most powerful and flourishing portion of the globe; and the arts and improvements of life, transported from Europe, will be carried, perhaps, to higher perfection than they have ever attained in their parent region. At present, America, growing with such rapidity, presents the spectacle of constant and cheerful change ;-new countries rising, new cities founding, desert after desert converted into the abode of culture and habitation. Before beginning to trace the progress of American discovery, two preliminary questions arise, which have excited the natural curiosity and interest of the modern world :- Was America known in any degree, or through any channel, before the days of Columbus?-and what was the origin of the nations by whom it was found inhabited, thinly indeed, but throughout its whole extent? The questions are closely connected, and have generally been treated in combination; but as they are materially different, we shall here endeavour successively to collect the means of forming a judgment relative to each.

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CHAPTER I.

ON SUPPOSED EARLY DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA.

General Statement of the Question. Absence of authentic Records. Probabilities.-Mode of ancient Navigation. Different Modes in which Vessels might have reached America. The Carthaginians. The Saracens. The Welsh under Madoc.-The Scandinavians. Voyages to Vinland-Eric, Leif, Thorvald, Thorfin, &c.-Vinland not America. What Country Vinland is. Voyages of the Zeni.-Estotiland. Drogio.-Icaria.Estotiland not America. What Country Estotiland was.

IT occurs at once as a curious and interesting question, whether the ancients, who made such researches into all the kingdoms of nature, and from whom we derive the principles of almost every other knowledge, remained in profound and perpetual ignorance of that vast portion of the globe which lay beyond the Atlantic? Did no Greek or Phenician navigator ever venture across that formidable gulf? Did they never for a moment succeed in lifting that awful veil, which covered from their view the vast world of the West?

Upon this subject volumes have been written, the authors of which have made an immense display of erudition. They have ransacked the records of every naval state in antiquity, to examine whether they have or have not undertaken this grand expedition. These discussions have served no purpose but that for which, perhaps, they were mainly intended, of displaying the erudition of their authors. They have all been obliged to begin and end with the simple fact, that the records of antiquity contain upon this subject absolutely nothing. There are distinct notices of voyages undertaken along the eastern and western coasts of Africa, the southern of Asia, and the northern of Europe; but there is not the faintest rumour of one who directed his daring keel into the vast abysses of ocean. In the total absence of historical document, we have left only a calculation of probabilities. Was it or was it not probable that some one vessel belonging to the great maritime Mediterranean states should make its way across the Atlantic? If we listen to some speculators, nothing could be less difficult. To a learned professor, seated at ease in his elbow-chair, and looking at the space which the Atlantic occupies on a sheet-map of the world, the crossing of it appears no very vast achievement. Very different is the lot of the mariner, who, without guide or compass, amid the peril of tempest and famine, must make his way across the space which it really occupies on the surface of the globe.

Let us grapple closely with the subject. There were only two modes in which America could have been discovered. Either an adventurer, like Columbus, must have undertaken a voyage for that express

purpose, or a vessel sailing along the western coasts of Europe must have been driven by tempest upon the shores of the new world. Let us attempt to weigh the probabilities in either case.

Is it likely that any voyage was undertaken and achieved by the ancients for the discovery of America ? Of this idea a strong refutation is certainly afforded simply by the profound silence of antiquity. Doubtless its naval records, when compared with the modern, are very scanty. Yet enough transpires to show that deep interest was excited, and reiterated efforts made, for the exploration of all the unknown shores of the three continents. Eudoxus, Sataspes, and Hanno, are celebrated by their attempts to navigate the eastern and western coasts of Africa; Himilco and Pytheas examined the western and northern shores of Europe; while Nearchus was sent by Alexander to traverse the southern shores of Asia.

But there is not the least hint as if a wish or idea had ever arisen, to inquire into the secrets of the Atlantic deep. Such a conception was indeed altogether foreign to the genius of ancient navigation. The vessels were constructed and equipped solely with reference to coasting voyages. The oar was the main instrument in producing the movement even of the largest vessels, which were only distinguished by the numbers and successive benches of oars. Being thus in the constant proximity of the coast, they were not in the habit of carrying either provisions or water for the whole voyage, but trusted to obtaining them on land at short intervals. Even the fleet of Nearchus, equipped by Alexander with all