Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in 1474, and used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.
Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir. A. D. 150.
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.) There they hid the sacred tablets, which remained concealed until they were miraculously discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827. There is, of course, no element of tradition in this story. It is all pure fiction, and of a very clumsy sort, such as might easily be devised by an ignorant man accustomed to the language of the Bible; and of course it was suggested by the old notion of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The references are to The Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.[Back to Main Text]