by
people of advanced scientific culture, who had, it is
generally believed, the compass, and who from an early age
were proficient in astronomy."[543:2]

Prof. Max Mueller, it would seem, entertains similar ideas to our own,
expressed as follows:

"In their (the American Indians') languages, as well as in
their religions, traces may possibly still be found, before it
is too late, _of pre-historic migrations of men from the
primitive Asiatic to the American Continent, either across the
stepping-stones of the Aleutic bridge in the North, or lower
South, by drifting with favorable winds from island to island,
till the hardy canoe was landed or wrecked on the American
coast, never to return again to the Asiatic home from which it
had started_."[543:3]

It is very evident then, that the religion and mythology of the Old and
New Worlds, have, in part, at least, a common origin. Lord Kingsborough
informs us that the Spanish historians of the 16th century were not
disposed to admit that America had ever been colonized from the West,
"chiefly on account of the state in which religion was found in the new
continent."[543:4]

And Mr. Tylor says:

"Among the mass of Central American traditions . . . there
occur certain passages in the story of an early emigration of
the Quiche race, which have much the appearance of vague and
broken stories derived in some way from high Northern
latitudes."[543:5]

Mr. McCulloh, in his "Researches," observes that:

"In analyzing many parts of their (the ancient Americans')
institutions, especially those belonging to their cosmogonal
history, their religious superstitions, and astronomical
computations, we have, in these abstract matters, found
abundant proof to assert that there has been formerly a
connection between the people of the two continents. Their
communications, however, have taken place at a very remote
period of time; for those matters in which they more decidedly
coincide, are undoubtedly those which belong to the earliest
history of mankind."

It is unquestionably from _India_ that we have derived, partly through
the Persians and other nations, most of our metaphysical and theological
doctrines, as well as our nursery tales. Who then can deny that these
same doctrines and legends have been handed down by oral tradition to
the chief of the