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216 NOTE II.

RESPECTING THE TRACES OF PHŒNICIAN COLONIZATION TO BE FOUND IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

Among the theories which were put forward after the discovery of America by Columbus respecting the part of the old world from whence the Nations which were found there had originally come, was one which maintained that traces of a Phœnician influence were to be met with. Horne in his work 'de originibus Americanis', and Calmet in his Dissertation on the Hebrews held this view, and the grounds which they give in support of it are worthy of more attention than they have received of late years. To enter into their line of argument would oblige me to exceed the space which can here be properly given to the subject, but the result sought to be arrived at will be nearly the same. I shall endeavour to show that the references to lands beyond the Atlantic to be met with in the classics are so precise and to be found in so many writers of different times, that they cannot in critical fairness be regarded as visionary fancies mixed up with the results of scientific or historical researches: and then that the remains of ancient cities still existing in Central America, as well as certain customs of the former inhabitants afford a probability, approaching as nearly to certainty as we could expect, that a people who in ancient times inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean made voyages to Yucatan and the neighbouring islands.

The jealousy which the Nations of the more remote ages of antiquity always evinced in regard to all matters that concerned their colonies, a feeling not yet quite extinct, is sufficient reason to account for the scanty notices to be met with in the classics. The original records of voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules were written in the Phœnician or some kindred language, and even if these had been made public, some at least must be supposed to have perished in the political convulsions which had taken place before the time of Herodotus. The Greeks were not disposed to believe anything which they could not thoroughly understand; and if so well attested an event as the circumnavigation of Africa in the reign of Pharaoh Necho was discredited because the sun was reported to assume a different position towards the spectator on opposite sides of the equator, we cannot wonder that accounts of lands inhabited by human beings beyond the Atlantic should be re-