the sachem assumed the chaplet, the Indians threw down their bows and arrows and seated themselves round their chiefs in the form of a half-moon.

Mr. O'Brien is not troubled with any misgivings as to whether or not the phoenicians spread into America. He simply asserts that they did, and seems to consider any objection to his view as utterly unworthy of serious argument. "The Algankinese," he says, "are the most influential and commanding people in the whole of North America. Their name in IRISH indicates as much— viz., algan-kine, or kinealgan, a noble community, corresponding to the phoenician words alga and gens, which mean the same thing. The language of this people is the master language of the whole country, and what is truly remarkable, understood, as Baron de Humboldt asserts, by all the indian nations except two. What, then, are we to infer from this obvious affinity? Why unmistakeably that a colony of that same people who first inhabited Ireland, and assigned to it those characteristic names which so disconcerted the harmony of Mr. O'Flaherty's acoustic organs, had fixed themselves at an early date in what has been miscalled the New World." Mr. O'Flaherty had described the ancient irish names as no less outlandish than "the names of the savages in the american forests," and thus, according to Mr. O'Brien, had blundered into the truth. One difficulty stands in the way. Mr. O'Brien has himself represented the celts as being the first people who inhabited Ireland, not the phonicians. On the whole, then, I think we may conclude that

Phoenician Ireland.

voyagers from Ireland really reached Iceland, and very likely America, at an extremely early date, possibly long before the Christian era. It is not improbable that the phoenicians of Ireland, gradually succumbing before the growing strength of other races in that country, led the way, and were followed by the irish christians, unless we can suppose that some of the phoenicians themselves had become converted to Christianity.

Where did the mound builders and the old canadian copper miners, the ancient peruvians and pretoltec builders of Palenque come from? Did they grow up on the land where they lived and died, or did they swarm forth from that great cradle, the vast mysterious steppes of Asia? Men seem quite unwilling to believe that they could by any possibility be indigenous, and it has been supposed that some of the first wanderers from Asia passed by Behring's Straits to America, and thence spread over this vast continent. Professor Wilson seems rather to lean to the opinion that they may have crossed the Pacific at once to the western coast of America. The great preponderance of stone buildings between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, the nearness of those of old Peru to this great sea, and the numerous traces of similar architecture in the islands of the Pacific, are considered as proofs of a common settlement. But as it seems difficult to imagine that they sought a few scattered islands, it is surmised that at a comparatively modern period large tracts of lands in the Pacific sank down, and left only those little specks of islands which now dot its vast expanse. Professor Dana, geologist to an expedition sent out by the United States Government, adopted

this conclusion, and Mr. Hall, who also accompanied the expedition, gathered such data as satisfied him that the singular stone structures of Ualan and Bonabe were built when the sites on which they stand were much higher than now; in fact, they are at present sunk so much that what were once paths are now passages for canoes. Again, the remarkable traces of the great stone or megalithic carving observed by the celebrated Captain Beechey on some of the islands near the coasts of Peru and Chili, are now found repeated at Bonabe and other islands near the asiatic coast.

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST COLONISTS OF SACRED HISTORY; OR THE LOST TRIBES.

"Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast."

DID any person ever come to a satisfactory conclusion as to what had become of the ten tribes? I can scarcely believe in the existence of such a philosophical mind, and can safely say that I never heard or read till now of anything that looked really like a solution of the enigma.

"When the Spaniards," says Mr. Tylor,* "came to these countries (Yucatan and Mexico), as soon as they had leisure to ask themselves what could be the origin of the people they found there, of course the answer at once was 'the lost tribes of Israel.' Indeed the nose of the mexican Indian is said to be very jewish. And as we looked at these grave taciturn men, with their brown complexions, bright eyes, and strikingly aquiline noses, it did not seem strange that this belief should have been generally held, considering the state of knowledge on such matters in these days. We English find the ten tribes in the red men of the North: jews have written books in Hebrew for their own people, to make known to them that the rest of their race had been found in the mountains of Chili, retaining unmistakeable traces of their origin and conversing fluently in Hebrew: and

* Anahuac, p. 17.

but lately they turned up, collected together and converted to Christianity, on the shores of the Caspian. The last two theories have their supporters at the present day. Crude as most of these ideas are, one feels a good deal of interest in the first inquiry that set men thinking seriously about the origin of races, and laid the foundation of the science of ethnology."

Again, other observers have quite satisfied themselves that these tribes existed on the coast of China; but this is overthrown by its being proved that they lived in Kurdistan under the name of Nestorians, who do not resemble the jew in face and never practise circumcision. Eldad the Danite had ages before found them in Tartary. Sir William Jones gave his consideration to the question of their being the Afghans, and this view seems now positively to be settled in the affirmative.

One of the most original theories ever yet broached was that by the late celebrated Robert Knox in his noble work the "Races of Man." This keen observer

proposes the hypothesis that these people, whose mysterious disappearance has long caused philosophers so much toil and perplexity, had gone into the interior of the earth, by the hole which Captain Symonds discovered near the North Pole; a very satisfactory solution indeed if it could be proved; but as it would have been rather difficult to follow them far below the surface, the theory must pass for what it is worth.

Whether they ever made this trial trip into the bowels of the land or not, they must have found it an unsuitable abode, as they are at last shown to be living in Afghanistan. They call themselves Ben