_America known to the Ancients._--To the list of authorities on this
subject given in Vol. i., p. 342., I have the pleasure to add Father
Laffiteau; Bossu[7], in his _Travels through Louisiana_; and though
last, not least, Acosta, who in his _Naturall and Morall Historie of the
East and West Indies_, translated by E.G. [Grimestone], 1604, 4to.,
devotes eighty-one pages to a review of the opinions of the ancients on
the new world.
The similarity which has been observed to exist between the manners of
several American nations, and those of some of the oldest nations on our
continent, which seems to demonstrate that this country was not unknown
in ancient times, has been traced by Nicholls, in the first part of his
_Conference with a Theist_, in several particulars, viz. burning of the
victim in sacrifices, numbering by tens, fighting with bows and arrows,
their arts of spinning, weaving, &c. The arguments, multitudinous as
they are, adduced by Adair for his hypothesis that the American Indians
are descended from the Jews, serve to prove that the known or old world
furnished the new one with men. To these may be added the coincidences
noticed in "NOTES AND QUERIES;" burning the dead (Vol. i., p. 308.); the
art of manufacturing glass (p. 341.); scalping (Vol. ii., p. 78.). Your
correspondents will doubtless be able to point out other instances.
Besides drinking out of the skulls of their enemies, recorded of the
Scythians by Herodotus; and of the savages of Louisiana by Bossu; I beg
to mention a remarkable one furnished by Catlin--the sufferings endured
by the youths among the Mandans, when admitted into the rank of
warriors, {110} reminding us of the probationary exercises which the
priests of Mithras forced the candidates for initiation to undergo.