Since this elevation, forests have been established over it which are older than the Spanish Conquest, and now it is once more subsiding. In 1862, at a meeting of the Royal Geological Society, Sir Roderick Murchison spoke of these discoveries as follows: "The discoveries Mr. Wilson has made of the existence of the works of man in a stratum of mould beneath the sea level, and covered by several feet of clay, the phenomenon being persistent for sixty miles, are of the highest interest to physical geographers and geologists. The facts seem to demonstrate that, within the human period, the lands on the west coast of Equatorial America were depressed and submerged, and that after the accumulation of marine clays above the terrestrial relics the whole coast was elevated to its present position." Assuming the facts to be as Mr. Wilson reports (and they have not been called in question), it follows that there was human civilization to a certain extent in South America at the time of the older stone age of Western Europe. The oldest Peruvian date of Montesinos is quite modern compared with this. The fact may be considered in connection with another mentioned in the section on American Ethnology, namely, that the most ancient fauna on this continent, man probably included, is that of South America. But, without regard to what may be signified by these discoveries of Mr. Wilson, there is good reason for believing that the Peruvian civilization was much more ancient than it has been the fashion to admit. Peru would now be a very different country if the Spaniards had been sufficiently controlled by Christianity and civilization to treat the Peruvians justly, and seek nothing more than friendly intercourse with them. But they went there as greedy buccaneers, unscrupulous robbers, and brought every thing to ruin. At no time since the Spanish Conquest has the country been as orderly, as prosperous, or as populous as they found it. It has fallen to a much lower condition. Industry and thrift have been supplanted by laziness and beggarly poverty. Ignorance and incapacity have taken the place of that intelligence and enterprise which enabled the old Peruvians to maintain their remarkable system of agriculture, complete their great works, and made them so industrious and skillful in their manufactures. The region covered by the Peruvian empire has not half as many people now as it had in the time of the Incas. Is it possible to imagine the present inhabitants of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia cultivating their soil with intelligent industry, building aqueducts five hundred miles long, and constructing magnificently paved roads through the rocks and across the ravines of the Andes, from Quito to Chili? One of the scholars connected with the scientific expedition which visited South America in 1867, describing the ancient greatness and present inferior condition of Quito, exclaims, "May the future bring it days equal to those when it was called the 'City of the Incas!" He might appropriately utter a similar wish for the whole country. APPENDIX. A. THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA. Ir is generally known, I suppose, that original manuscript records of Norse voyages to this continent have been carefully preserved in Iceland, and that they were first published at Copenhagen in 1837, with a Danish and a Latin translation. These narratives are plain, straightforward, business-like accounts of actual voyages made by the Northmen, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, to Greenland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Within the whole range of the literature of discovery and adventure no volumes can be found which have more abundant internal evidence of authenticity. It always happens, when something important is unexpectedly added to our knowledge of the past, that somebody will blindly disbelieve. Dugald Stewart could see nothing but "frauds of arch-forgers" in what was added to our knowledge of ancient India when the Sanskrit language and literature were discovered. In the same way, here and there a doubter has hesitated to accept the fact communicated by these Norse records; but, with the evidence before us, we may as reasonably doubt any unquestioned fact of history which depends on similar testimony. Any account of these voyages should be prefaced by some notice of Iceland. Look on a map at the position of Iceland, and you will see at once that it should not be classed as a European island. It belongs to North America. It was, in fact, unknown to modern Europe until the year 861 A.D., when it was discovered by Nadodd, a Norse rover. There is some reason to believe the Irish had previously sailed to this island, but no settlement was established in it previous to the year 875, when it was occupied by a colony of Norwegians under a chief named Ingolf. Owing to civil troubles in Norway, he was soon followed by many of the most intelligent, wealthy, and honorable of his countrymen. Thus Iceland, away in the Northern Ocean, became a place of great inIn the tenth and eleventh centuries the Icelanders had becom terest. |