rlier time of barbarism and pastoral
simplicity; that its history goes back through all the misty ages of
pre-historic time to an unknown date previous to the beginning of such
civilization in any part of the Old World. It is hardly possible to make
it more ancient.

AMERICAN CITIES SEEN BY TYRIANS.

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 H