The improbability of the Indians having carried "the body or hulk of the ship which the admiral lost" from the northern side of Hispaniola to the eastern side of Guadaloupe, will appear from the distance, which is not less than two hundred leagues in a direction opposite to the constant blowing of the wind. Nor will Herrera's conjecture, that the sternpost of the admiral's ship was carried thither by a tempest, be readily admitted by any who are acquainted with the navigation of the West Indies; for it must have passed through a multitude of islands and rocks, and, without a miracle, could scarcely have come entire from so great a distance in such foul seas. But the difficulty is farther increased by considering what Don Ferdinand and Herrera have both asserted, that, when Columbus had lost his ship, "he built a fort with the timber, whereof he lost no part, but made use of it all;"* and this fort was afterward burned by the natives. If, therefore, there be any truth in the story of the sternpost found at Guadaloupe, it must have belonged to some other vessel, either foundered at sea or wrecked on the shore.

Under the head of fortuitous visits to the * Life of Columbus, chap. xxxiv. Herrera, book i., chap. xviii.

American Continent may be included a circumstance mentioned by Peter Martyr,* that, not far from a place called Quarequa in the Gulf of Darien, Vasco Nunez met with a colony of negroes. From the smallness of their number it was supposed that they had not been long arrived on that coast.† These negroes could have come in no other vessels but canoes; a circumstance by no means incredible to those who have read the accounts of Cook and other navigators of the tropical

seas.

To these facts may be added the casual discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese commander Pedro Alvarez Cabral, in his voyage to India in the year 1500, an account of which is preserved by Dr. Robertson.‡ "In order to avoid the calms near the coast of Africa, he stood out to sea, and kept so far west that, to his surprise, he found himself on the shore of an unknown country, in the tenth degree of south latitude. He imagined at first that it was some island in the Atlantic Ocean; but, proceeding along its coast for several days, he was gradually led to believe

* De orbe novo, Decad. iii., chap i.

+ Edwards's Hist. West Indies, vol. i., p. 110.
Hist. America, vol. i., p. 151.

that a country so extensive formed a part of some great continent.”

These instances may serve as so many specimens of the manner in which America might have proved an asylum to some of the ancient navigators of the African coasts or of the Canary Islands; and being arrived, it would be impossible for them to return. The same winds which brought them hither, continuing to blow from the eastward, would either discourage them from making the attempt, or oblige them to put back if they had made it. No argument, then, can be drawn from hence in favour of a mutual intercourse between this and the old continent. Those who would prove that America was known to the ancients must produce better evidence than they have yet produced, if they contend for any other knowledge than what was acquired by casual discoverers who never returned.

The opinion that America was peopled in part by the Phoenicians was long since. maintained by Hornius; and, though rejected by many succeeding writers, has been lately revived by Bryan Edwards,* a well-informed merchant of the Island of Jamaica.

* Hist. W. Indies, vol. i., p. 103, 4to.

He extends the argument no farther than to the Charaibe nation, who inhabited the Windward Islands and some part of the Southern Continent, "whose manners and characteristic features denote a different ancestry from the generality of the American nations." In support of this opinion, he has produced, perhaps, as much evidence from a similarity of manners and language as a subject of such remote antiquity can admit.

To this elegant work I must refer the reader, and shall add one only remark, arising from the preceding observations, that if any accession of inhabitants was made to America by the desultory migration of the Phonician or Carthaginian navigators, it is most rational to look for them between the tropics, the very place where the Charaibes were found.