s altogether probable that the people
whom the Spaniards found in America came by migration from the Old
World. But it is by no means probable that their migration occurred
within so short a period as five or six thousand years. A series of
observations and discoveries kept up for the last half-century seem to
show that North America has been continuously inhabited by human beings
since the earliest Pleistocene times, if not earlier.

[Footnote 1: See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 148. A
good succinct account of these various theories, monuments of
wasted ingenuity, is given in Short's _North Americans of
Antiquity_, chap. iii. The most elaborate statement of the
theory of an Israelite colonization of America is to be found
in the ponderous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, _Mexican
Antiquities_, London, 1831-48, 9 vols. elephant-folio. Such a
theory was entertained by the author of that curious piece of
literary imposture, _The Book of Mormon_. In this book we are
told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord
selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and
instructed them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage
of 344 days, they were brought to America, where they "did
build many mighty cities," and "prosper exceedingly." But after
some centuries they perished because of their iniquities. In
the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impending over Judah,
two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine guidance led a
colony to America. There, says the veracious chronicler, their
descendants became great nations, and worked in _iron_, and had
stuffs of _silk_, besides keeping plenty of _oxen_ and _sheep_.
(_Ether_, ix. 18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought
many wonderful works; people spake with tongues, and the dead
were raised. (3 _Nephi_, xxvi. 14, 15.) But about the close of
the fourth century of our era, a terrible war between Lamanites
and Nephites ended in the destruction of the latter. Some two
million warriors, with their wives and children, having been
slaughtered, the prophet Mormon escaped, with his son Moroni,
to the "hill Cumorah," hard by the "waters of Ripliancum," or
Lake Ontario. (_Ether_, xv. 2, 8, 11.) T