The view just stated touches the imagination and stirs the feelings like
a genuine "wonder story;" but this should not be allowed to deny it a
fair hearing. Those who reject it should disprove it before they hasten
to pronounce it "absurd" and "impossible," else it may be suspected that
their accustomed views of antiquity are due more to education, and to
the habit of following a given fashion of thinking, than to actual
reflection. It needs demonstration; and we may reasonably suggest that,
in the present state of our knowledge of the past, demonstration is
impossible. Meanwhile, a clear historical record appears to make it
certain that flourishing towns and cities were seen and visited in
America three thousand years ago, by persons who went to them across the
Atlantic.
It is said, more or less clearly, by more than one Greek writer, that
the Phoenicians and Carthaginians knew the way to a continent beyond
the Atlantic. One fact preserved in the annals of Tyrian commerce, and
mentioned by several ancient writers, is related by Diodorus Siculus
very particularly as a matter of authentic history. His narration begins
with the following statement:
"Over against Africa lies a very great island, in the vast ocean, many
days' sail from Libya westward. The soil there is very fruitful, a great
part whereof is mountainous, but much likewise champaign, which is the
most sweet and pleasant part, for it is watered by several navigable
streams, and beautified with many gardens of pleasure planted with
divers sorts of trees and an abundance of orchards. The towns are
adorned with stately buildings and banqueting houses pleasantly situated
in their gardens and orchards." The great ruins in Yucatan, and
elsewhere in Mexico and Central America, bear witness that there was,
anciently, such a country as this, across the ocean, "many days' sail
from Libya westward;" but Diodorus Siculus lived before the Christian
era, and how was this known to him and others more than fifteen hundred
years before America was discovered by Columbus? He tells us as follows:
"The Phoenicians (Tyrians) having found out the coasts beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, sailed along by the coast of Africa. One of their
ships, on a sudden, was driven by a furious storm far off into the main
ocean. After they had lain under this violent tempest many days, they at
length arrived at this island."
This reminds us of the constrained voyage of Biarni, the Northman, from
Iceland to the coast of Massachusetts, in the year 985 A.D.[163-*] He,
too, was storm-driven "many days," and in this way forced to the
discovery of New England. He started for Greenland, and finally reached
it by way of Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. The tempest-driven ship of
the Tyrians must have been carried to the West Indies, and to the coast
of Honduras or Yucatan, where the Tyrians saw the gardens, cities, and
stately edifices. The description of what they saw brings to mind
similar accounts of what was seen in Yucatan by the Spaniards, when they
began to sail along the coast of that peninsula in the beginning of the
sixteenth century; Juan Diaz de Solis and Vincente Yanez Pincon in 1506,
and Hernandez de Cordova in 1517. They, too, saw handsome towns and
stately buildings.
This undesigned voyage of the Tyrian ship seems to have been made
previous to the building of Gadir, or Gades. Perhaps they made other
voyages to that region, but it was a custom of the Phoenicians to be
very secret in regard to the methods and paths of their commerce. A
complete history of their commerce and navigation from the earliest
times would unquestionably give us views of the past quite as startling
to the prevalent assuming, unreasoning habits of belief, or rather
disbelief, concerning antiquity, as that hypothesis of Atlantis and the
earliest civilization. What is told by Diodorus authorizes us to suppose
that the Tyrians who went across the Atlantic as described beheld some
of the ancient American cities which are now found in ruins, for it is
certain that nothing of the kind existed any where else "many days' sail
from Libya [Northern Africa] westward." Their voyage was made more than
eleven hundred years previous to the Christian era. If the old Central
American books may be trusted, this was not very long previous to the
beginning of the Toltec domination.
Beyond this date, the history of the "Colhuas," who are described as the
original civilizers, must have covered a very long period; how long we
may imagine, but can not know. Gadir, now Cadiz, founded eleven hundred
years previous to the Christian era, is still an inhabited city; it has
been several times reconstructed, but never deserted. When it was built,
Tartessus, then a very old city, still existed, although it was in ruins
long before Christ appeared. How long had Palenque been in existence
when that Tyrian ship was driven across the Atlantic? And how long had
that region been a region of cities and civilization? There is no
history which can answer these questions.