ercules, 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 inh