CLAIMS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 155, 21 April 1876, Page 13

CLAIMS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

Probably no archaeological mystery is enshrouded with more interest and a greater charm than the discovery of the Western Continent. This fact is attested by the devotion and zeal of a galaxy of men of genius such as Humboldt, Kingsborough, Stephens, Rain, and well-nigh a score of others. The various theories for the solution of this perplexing problem, many of them ingeniously spun, are too numerous for mention here. Only the principal claims to the discovery and colonisation can receive attention. Ancient America, with its noble monument s of a once grand civilisation, is to us a land of darkness, and its history one of uncertainty. In our inquiries fact must, in a measure, ba exchanged for conjecture. Very scanty are the records that come down to us from the ancients' concerning their knowledge of the Atlantic, and the islands hidden in its bosom, though those indomitable sailors, the Phoenicians, had passed the pillars of Hercules, and established colonies on the western coast of Africa, in the ninth century before Christ. Three hundred years later (B.C. 570), according to Herodotus, Pharoah Necho fitted out an expedition, manned by Phoenician sailors, and sent it around the entire coast of Africa. That the Canary Islands were discovered and colonised by the Phoenicians, there is no doubt. Strabo, speaking of the islands of the Blessed, or Fortunate Isles, as they were afterwards called, adds, " That those who pointed out those things were the Phoenicians^ who before the time of Homer had possession of the best part of Africa and Spain. It is a well known fact that these hardy adventurers of the seas were in the habit of preserving with the strictest secrecy the names and location of the distant lands with which they engaged in commerce. Where they sailed and traded, other than in the ports of the Indies and of the British Isles, must remain unknown. Whether furnished by this nation of sailors or not, the ancients seem to have had some remarkable information concerning an island or continent hidden in the Sea of Darkness as the Atlantic was called. The first mention of this is made by Theopompus, a celebrated Greek orator and historian, who flourished in the time of Alexander the Great. His description of this distant island, of great dimensions, and inhabited by a strange people, is preserved in iElian's " Variffi Historise," written during the reign of Alexander Severus.