ended the transmigration. The pious and
enlightened father, Charlevoix, a French Jesuit, remarkable for his
aversion to the marvelous, common to all great travelers, is conclusively
of the same opinion; nay, he goes still farther, and decides upon the
manner in which the discovery was effected, which was by sea, and under
the immediate direction of the great Noah. "I have already observed,"
exclaims the good father, in a tone of becoming indignation, "that it is
an arbitrary supposition that the grandchildren of Noah were not able to
penetrate into the new world, or that they never thought of it. In effect,
I can see no reason that can justify such a notion. Who can seriously
believe that Noah and his immediate descendants knew less than we do, and
that the builder and pilot of the greatest ship that ever was, a ship
which was formed to traverse an unbounded ocean, and had so many shoals
and quicksands to guard against, should be ignorant of, or should not
have communicates to his descendants, the art of sailing on the ocean?
Therefore, they did sail on the ocean--therefore, they sailed to
America--therefore, America was discovered by Noah!"

Now all this exquisite chain of reasoning, which is so strikingly
characteristic of the good father, being addressed to the faith, rather
than the understanding, is flatly opposed by Hans de Laet, who declares it
a real and most ridiculous paradox to suppose that Noah ever entertained
the thought of discovering America; and as Hans is a Dutch writer, I am
inclined to believe he must have been much better acquainted with the
worthy crew of the ark than his competitors, and of course possessed of
more accurate sources of information. It is astonishing how intimate
historians do daily become with the patriarchs and other great men of
antiquity. As intimacy improves with time, and as the learned are
particularly inquisitive and familiar in their acquaintance with the
ancients, I should not be surprised if some future writers should gravely
give us a picture of men and manners as they existed before the flood, far
more copious and accurate than the Bible; and that, in the course of
another century, the log-book of the good Noah should be as current among
historians as the voyages of Captain Cook, or the renowned history of
Robinson Crusoe.

I shall not occupy my time by discussing the huge mass of additional
suppositions, conjectures, and probabilities respecting the first
discovery of