THE ABORIGINES. SECTION I. Fabulous History.-Different Pretenders to the Original Discovery of America-The Phoenicians-The Welsh-The Chinese-The Norwegians-The Germans:-America, how originally peopled?-By the Europeans?-By the Asiatics? Or by Neither? PLATO, we believe, is the earliest author, who has given us the description of a country, which might be taken for America. While yet a boy, he says, he was told by his grandfather, that, after the gods had divided the universe, Neptune took to himself a mortal spouse; and, having several children, bestowed upon them their rightful portions of his empire. To Atlas, the eldest, he gave a vast island, beyond the Pillars of Hercules; which, after him, was called Atlantis. Never, perhaps, was a king blessed with so rich and beautiful a country, or so prosperous and happy a people. The bowels of the earth teemed with the precious metals; while the surface displayed a every variety of nutricious and aromatic plant, root, fruit, and flower. The woods furnished a covert for all descriptions of useful and comely beasts; and were replete with birds of every sort, whether distinguished by the beauty of their plumage, or the melody of their notes. Innumerable ships, capacious harbours, magnificent bridges, splendid edifices, gymnasia, hippodromes, aqueducts, reservoirs,-every thing, in a word, which indicates the highest state of opulence, prosperity, and civilization,--might be found in the felicitous dominions of Atlas. The temple of Neptune alone was six hundred and twenty-five feet long, and three hundred and sixty broad; with spires of silver, columns of gold, and walls and pavements of brass. This vision was too bright to be permanent; and, that the end of the story might be consistent with the beginning, the whole island of Atlantis is said to have been swallowed up, at last, by a voracious whirlpool.* Most readers would take this to be a new proof of the observation, that Plato was a poet by nature, and a philosopher by chance: yet there are not wanting ancients, who assert the actual existence of such an island as Atlantis; nor moderns, who imagine that island to have been no other than America. Something like truth is conjectured to be the substratum of * PLAT. in TIM. et CRIT. Opera. Lugdini. 1690. pp. 525. 561, 562. The story was first told to Solon by an Egyptian priest. all heathen factions; and the story of Plato's grandfather is supposed to have been fabricated from the traditional accounts of the Phoenicians; who, as we are told, performed two voyages, at least, to this hemisphere; the first, it would seem, from a deliberate predetermination, under the same Atlas of whom we have just spoken;-the second, much against their will, in consequence of a violent storm, which drove their vessel from the coast of Africa, and carried her to an extensive island or continent far to the west of Lybia.* From Phoenicia the knowledge of the New World would, of course, be transferred to Carthage; and Aristotle is quoted as saying, that the merchants of the latter performed such frequent voyages hither, as to make the senate fear the depopulation of their city, and endeavour to prevent it by law.† The voyage of Atlas may have been the origin of the account already given; but we can find no special reason for believing this to be the real prose of the fable; and, even if we should admit such a voyage to have been performed, it will by no means follow, that Atlas came to America; for the vast island, according to Plato's own account, was not beyond sight from the Pillars of Hercules. The second voyage, if it may be so called, is quite as improbable as the first. That * HORNIUS de Origine Gent. Amer. 1. i. c. 6.-DIOD. SIC. 1. v. c. 19. ARISTOT. de Mund. c. 3. |