EARLY AMERICA

Southland Times, Issue 18969, 16 June 1923, Page 15 (Supplement)

EARLY AMERICA

IN THE DAYS BEFORE COLUMBUS. Nationality for the first person to set foot on American soil is maimed by severs! European CGimtri-.s. So ur ad history or tradition awuras the honour to hardy mariners of ike Atlantic; anu yet is it not possible or exen probable that before Leif or Columbus set torch in their irail crafts of discovery, that contact with the shores of North America had been effected by some of the Asiatic races? I It is said that Buddhist history records the. | exploration oi the Pacific (?oast o. America j some 600 years ago by a bn nd of mission ! aries from Japan, writes Thomas Riggs, former Governor of Alaska, in the New t ork Times. It is supposed that these ad- : venturers followed the Kurile chain of islands to the Aleutians, then along this archipelago to the mainland of Alaska and thence as far south as California. Other expeditions maj r have crossed the narrow Bering Straits separating Asia from America. On a clear day the Diomede Islands can be seen from either continental shore. ■' That Japanese landed in America cenj turies ago seems almost proved by the finding of a quaint stone lamp now exhibited in the Alaska Historical Museum at Juneau, Alaska. The lamp was found some ten years ago by Charles Ulanky, a farmer, clearing his land near Knik, a little settlement at the head of Cook Inlet. It was uncovered in the alluvial silt at a depth of a foot, and by him presented to the Territory. The lamp is slightly oblong in shape with a greatest diameter of about twelve inches. The design resembles the conventional lotus leaf. At one end, opposite the wick lip, so as to face the light, squats the figure of Buddha, with the impenetrable calm of the East on his carven countenance.

By whom was this lamp left on the shores of Alaska? In this little known museum, Buddha and his lamp await the student of early history to solve the mystery.