afin de pouvoir par là arriver au ciel.' In another note he remarks, 'Ordoñez commentant ce passage y trouve tout naturellement la tour de Babel: mais il s'indigne contre les Babyloniens, de ce qu'ils avaient eu la mauvaise foi de dire à Votan que la tour avait été bâtie par ordre de leur aïeul commun (Noé): "Il faut remarquer ici, dit-il, que les Babyloniens n'ont fait que tromper Votan, en lui assurant que la tour avait été construite par ordre de leur aïeul Noé, afin d'en faire un chemin pour arriver au ciel: jamais certainement le saint patriarche n'eut la moindre part dans la folie arrogante de Nemrod" (Mémoire MS. sur Palenqué.) Nuñez de la Vega rapporte la même tradition sur Votan et ses voyages (Constitut. Diœces, in Præamb., n. 34).' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. lxxxviii.
144
Cabrera, Teatro, in Rio's Description, p. 34. I have followed Cabrera's account because, unfortunately, Ordoñez' work is not to be had. Brasseur gives a fuller account of Votan's adventures than Cabrera, but he professes to draw his information from fragments of Ordoñez' writings, and it is impossible to tell whether his extra information is the result of his own imagination or of that of his equally enthusiastic original. The learned Abbé relates that the men with whom Votan conversed concerning the tower of Babel, assured him 'que cet édifice était le lieu où Dieu avait donné à chaque famille un langage particulier. Il affirme qu'à son retour de la ville du temple de Dieu, il retourna une première et une seconde fois à examiner tous les souterrains par où il avait déjà passé, et les signes qui s'y trouvaient. Il dit qu'on le fit passer par un chemin souterrain qui traversait la terre et se terminait à la racine du ciel. A l'égard de cette circonstance, il ajoute que ce chemin n'était autre qu'un trou de serpent où il entra parce qu'il était un serpent.' Popol Vuh, p. lxxxix. See farther, concerning Votan: Carbajal Espinosa, Hist. Mex., tom. i., p. 165; Juarros, Hist. Guat., p. 208; Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Messico, tom. i., pp. 150-1; Boturini, Idea, p. 115; Levy, Nicaragua, p. 4; Tschudi's Peruvian Antiq., pp. 11-15; Priest's Amer. Antiq., pp. 248-9; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 43-5, 68-76; Domenech's Deserts, vol. i., pp. 10-7. This last is merely a literal copy of Tschudi, to whom, however, no credit is given.
145
'Ordoñez tire un argument du mot chivim, qu'il écrit aussi hivim, pour rappeler le chivim du pays des Hévéens de la Palestine, d'où il fait sortir les ancêtres de Votan. Dans la langue tzendale, qui était celle du livre attribué à Votan, la racine du mot chivin pourrait être chib ou chiib, qui signifie patrie, ou ghib qui veut dire armadille.' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. lxxxviii., note.
146
Cabrera, Teatro, in Rio's Description, pp. 47-53. It seems that the supposed Phœnician descent of the Americans has served as an excuse for the tyranny their conquerors exercised over them. 'Cursed be Canaan!' said Noah, 'A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' Montanus says that it is a mistake to term the Phœnicians descendants of Canaan, for they are a Semitic people. Nieuwe Weereld, p. 25.
147
'The strong Galleys, with sails and oars, and always before the constant East-Wind and onward wave-current, would accomplish ten miles an hour by day, and during the night, without the Rowers, six miles an hour, and, equally dividing the twenty-four hours, would make a run of 192 miles per day. Nautical proofs will show that in the above calculation the power of the Trade-Winds [i. e. the East-Winds] are underrated. The distance from Teneriffe to Florida is about 3300 miles, which by the foregone data they would traverse in seventeen and a quarter days. The Voyage may therefore with safety be said to have been accomplished during an entire month, and that, consequently the first landing of a branch of the human family in Ancient America would be in the last month of Autumn, three hundred and thirty-two years before the Christian Æra.'
148
It would be impossible to give here the entire evidence with which Mr Jones supports his theory. Suffice it to say that the analogies he adduces are far-fetched in the extreme, and that his premises are to a great extent grounded upon certain vague utterances of Isaiah the prophet. His unbounded dogmatism, were it less strongly marked, would render his work offensive and unreadable to those who disagree with his opinions; as it is, it is simply ludicrous. I cannot better express my opinion of the book than by using the words of the distinguished Américaniste Dr Müller: 'Ganz ohne Werth soll die in London 1843 erschienene Schrift eines Engländers, George Jonas, über die Urgeschichte des alten America sein.' Amerikanische Urreligionen, p. 3.
149
Jones' Hist. Anc. Amer., pp. 168-72.
150
According to Mr Jones, Solomon's temple was built by Tyrian workmen.
151
Gebelin affirms enthusiastically: '"que cette inscription vient d'arriver tout exprès du nouveau monde, pour confirmer ses idées sur l'origine des peuples, et que l'on y voit, d'une manière évidente, un monument phénicien, un tableau qui, sur le devant, désigne une alliance entre les peuples américains et la nation étrangère, arrivant, par des vents du nord, d'un pays riche et industrieux."' Humboldt, however, commenting upon this, writes: 'J'ai examiné avec soin les quatre dessins de la fameuse pierre de Taunton River… Loin d'y reconnoître un arrangement symétrique de lettres simples ou de caractères syllabiques, je n'y vois qu'un dessin à peine ébauché, et analogue à ceux que l'on a trouvés sur les rochers de la Norwège.' Vues, tom. i., pp. 181-2. 'The history of this inscription is scarcely surpassed, in the interest it has excited, or the novel phases it has exhibited at successive epochs of theoretical speculation, by any Perusinian, Eugubine, or Nilotic riddle. When the taste of American antiquaries inclined towards Phœnician relics, the Dighton inscription conformed to their opinions; and with changing tastes it has proved equally compliant. In 1783 the Rev. Ezra Stiles, D.D., President of Yale College, when preaching before the Governor and State of Connecticut, appealed to the Dighton Rock, graven, as he believed, in the old Punic or Phœnician character and language: in proof that the Indians were of the accursed seed of Canaan, and were to be displaced and rooted out by the European descendants of Japhet!.. So early as 1680 Dr. Danforth executed what he characterized as "a faithful and accurate representation of the inscription" on Dighton Rock. In 1712 the celebrated Dr. Cotton Mather procured drawings of the same, and transmitted them to the Secretary of the Royal Society of London, with a description, printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1741, referring to it as "an inscription in which are seven or eight lines, about seven or eight feet long, and about a foot wide, each of them engraven with unaccountable characters, not like any known character." In 1730, Dr. Isaac Greenwood, Hollisian Professor at Cambridge, New England, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of London a drawing of the same inscription, accompanied with a description which proves the great care with which his copy was executed. In 1768, Mr. Stephen Sewall, Professor of Oriental Languages at Cambridge, New England, took a careful copy, the size of the original, and deposited it in the Museum of Harvard University; and a transcript of this was forwarded to the Royal Society of London, six years later, by Mr. James Winthrop, Hollisian Professor of Mathematics. In 1786 the Rev. Michael Lort, D.D., one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society of Antiquaries of London, again brought the subject, with all its accumulated illustrations, before that learned society; and Colonel Vallency undertook to prove that the inscription was neither Phœnician nor Punic, but Siberian. Subsequently, Judge Winthrops executed a drawing in 1788; and again we have others by Judge Baylies and Mr. Joseph Gooding in 1790, by Mr. Job Gardner in 1812; and finally, in 1830, by a Commission appointed by the Rhode Island Historical Society, and communicated to the Antiquaries of Copenhagen with elaborate descriptions: which duly appear in their Antiquitates Americanæ, in
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