Ox very few questions except the birthplace of Homer, have there been a greater variety of hypotheses put forward than as to the first discovery of America. Numbers of propositions have been advanced, each one a little more absurd than its neighbour. OF course, we have all heard that the Ten Tribes were the real ancestors of the American Indians; but, except that a romance written on this theme supplied the foundation for the Book of Mormon, so simple a fancy has left few marks behind it. The Ten Tribes are rather under a cloud at present; they have done duty so frequently, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Andes of Pere, that it is no wonder they are at present a little seedy and out ab elbows. Columbus, of course, did not discover America. Long before his time, the Norsemen had penetrated from their Greenland settlements to the present New England States, and had given the name of Vineland to the newly discovered district. So far we have a substratum of history to go on. This conclusion, however, does not satisfy those who seck for a further antiquity, or rather a prior introduction to the civilized life of the so-called old world. The Irish at some time sailed to some Iand situate in the Atlantic Ocean, and they have been claimed as the discoverers of the continent. Further research, however, goes to prove that the country touched at was rather the Faroe Islands than the continent of America.
But the most baseless of all. the theories of discovery is that founded on the supposed travels of a Chinese Buddhist monk in the fifth century. The introduction to this piece of history
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.