this country, with which unhappy historians overload
themselves in their endeavors to satisfy the doubts of an incredulous
world. It is painful to see these laborious wights panting, and toiling,
and sweating under an enormous burden, at the very outset of their works,
which, on being opened, turns out to be nothing but a mighty bundle of
straw. As, however, by unwearied assiduity, they seem to have established
the fact, to the satisfaction of all the world, that this country has
been discovered I shall avail myself of their useful labors to be
extremely brief upon this point.

I shall not, therefore, stop to inquire whether America was first
discovered by a wandering vessel of that celebrated Phoenician fleet,
which, according to Herodotus, circumnavigated Africa; or by that
Carthaginian expedition which, Pliny the naturalist informs us, discovered
the Canary Islands; or whether it was settled by a temporary colony from
Tyre, as hinted by Aristotle and Seneca. I shall neither inquire whether
it was first discovered by the Chinese, as Vossius with great shrewdness
advances; nor by the Norwegians in 1002, under Biron; nor be Behem the
German navigator, as Mr. Otto has endeavored to prove to the savants of
the learned city of Philadelphia.

Nor shall I investigate the more modern claims of the Welsh, founded on
the voyage of Prince Madoc in the eleventh century, who, having never
returned, it has since been wisely concluded that he must have gone to
America, and that for a plain reason if he did not go there, where else
could he have gone?--a question which most Socratically shuts out all
further dispute.

Laying aside, therefore, all the conjectures above mentioned, with a
multitude of others equally satisfactory, I shall take for granted the
vulgar opinion that America was discovered on the 12th of October, 1492,
by Christopher Colon, a Genoese, who has been clumsily nicknamed Columbus,
but for what reason I cannot discern. Of the voyages and adventures of
this Colon I shall say nothing, seeing that they are already sufficiently
known. Nor shall I undertake to prove that this country should have been
called Colonia, after his name, that being notoriously self-evident.

Having thus happily got my readers on this side of the Atlantic, I picture
them to myself, all impatience to enter upon the enjoyment of the land of
promise, and in full expectation that I will immediately deliver it into
their possession. But if I do