Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/36

30 men who came to this continent? At some time in their history they no doubt migrated from Central Asia, that cradle of the human race. As to when or by what road they found their way to America we cannot be so sure. A glance at the map of the world will show that away up among the icebergs of the polar circle the northwestern corner of America comes so near the north-eastern corner of Asia that their outlying islands seem like stepping-stones from one continent to the other. The Alaskan Indians, on our side, and their neighbors in Siberia, now find no difficulty in crossing Behring's Straits in their little kyacks, and it is more than probable that in the far-away past of which Mexican records tell, some of the wandering tribes of the Old World found their way to this continent by this northern road.

We hear now of small colonies of Japanese on our western coast who have come over by still another route, which can be seen on maps that give the direction of the ocean-currents. One of these great sea-rivers runs north through the Pacific Ocean quite near the eastern shore of Asia until it is opposite Japan; then, turning suddenly, it sweeps due east until it strikes the coast of California. The people of Asia occasionally drift over to America on this ocean-current. Uprooted trees of kinds which do not grow on this continent are found on the shore, and Japanese junks are stranded at the rate of about one every year, and sometimes, it is said, with some of their shipwrecked crew still alive.

It is probable that other civilized people succeeded Votan in the possession of Mexico, but until some time in the tenth century no one of them was described. At that period a new nation made its appearance among