some
historians, they rounded the Cape, they circumnavigated Africa. And
according to recent discoveries made by an American archaeologist,
they must have discovered America too! For in the ruins of the Aztecs
of Mexico there are traces of a Phoenician language and religion.
This, about the discovery of America, however, I can not verify with
anything from Sanchuniathon. But might they not have made this
discovery after the said Sanchuniathon had given up the ghost? And if
they did, what can We, their worthless descendants do for them now?
Ah, if we but knew the name of their Columbus! No, it is not practical
to build a monument to a whole race of people. And yet, they deserve
more than this from us, their descendants.

"These dealers in tin and amber, these manufacturers of glass and
purple, these developers of a written language, first gave the impetus
to man's activity and courage and intelligence. And this activity of
the industry and will is not dead in man. It may be dead in us
Syrians, but not in the Americans. In their strenuous spirit it rises
uppermost. After all, I must love the Americans, for they are my
Phoenician ancestors incarnate. Ay, there is in the nature of things a
mysterious recurrence which makes for a continuous, everlasting
modernity. And I believe that the spirit which moved those brave
sea-daring navigators of yore, is still working lustily, bravely, but
alas, not joyously--bitterly, rather, selfishly, greedily--behind the
steam engine, the electric motor, the plough, and in the clinic and
the studio as in the Stock Exchange. That spirit in its real essence,
however, is as young, as puissant to-day as it was when the native of
Byblus first struck out to explore the seas, to circumnavigate
Africa, to discover even America!"

And what in the end might Khalid discover for us or for himself, at
least, in his explorations of the Spirit-World? What Colony of the
chosen sons of the young and puissant Spirit, on some distant isle
beyond the seven seas, might he found? To what far, silent, undulating
shore, where "a written language is the instrument only of the lofty
expressions and aspirations of the soul" might he not bring us? What
Cape of Truth in the great Sea of Mystery might we not be able to
circumnavigate, if only this were possible of the language of man?

"Not with glass," he exclaims, "not with tear-bottles, not with
purple, not with a written language, am I now concerned, but rather