But this Opinion Grotius hath laid a strong and dangerous Battery against, that America could not be Peopled by the Tartars, because the Americans before the Spaniards coming thither, had never seen any Horses; whereas the Tartars use no Beast more, either in Peace or War, nor can less want: For the Tartarian Forces do not only consist in Horse; but the Wealth of this Countrey is reckon’d up in the numerous Breeds of Horses, and several Studs of Mares. Some of the Nobless keep a thousand Horse; none, though never so poor, but keep two or three; and Beggars there mounted crave Alms and Charity of the People. When they remove their Habitations, their Horses carry their Provisions and Tents: If Provisions grow short, they eat Mares Milk, high gusted with Garlick, which satisfies Hunger and Thirst; and the red Liquor which they tap warm from their Veins, serves them to help Digestion, and heighten their Humor, instead of the Blood of the Grape, our sweet Wine. The swiftest Rivers, though raging and precipitated with Land-floods, they dare adventure swimming their Horses over, hanging naked by their Manes, and guiding them by a slipp’d Rein whither they please: To their Tails they tie their Saddles, and other Necessaries, bound up in Rushes. When a Person of Quality prepares to cross any River, they tie two Horses Tail to Tail, and athwart both their Backs fasten a Mat pleited of Rushes, to sit on. When they are stopp’d at any broad River, or standing Lake, they kill and flea their worst Horses; then turning the Skins inside out, and well Liquoring, they stretch them open with the Ribs, which stand like the Bayles of a Tilted Wherry, and thus furnish’d, serves them for a Boat to carry eight Persons. When they take the Field, going to War, not any but musters three Horses; which makes their Armies, when drawn out in Campain, shew much bigger than indeed they are: And though many of them are kill’d in the Wars, or slain for Food, yet the European Tartars pay yearly forty thousand Horses to the Russians; from whence Grotius thus argues, “If America joyns to Tartary, then the Horses which run wild at Grass might easily have found America themselves, seeking to improve their Pasture, and have gone from one Countrey into the other, as it appears, that since the Spaniards transported Horses to America, they are dispers’d over the highest Mountains, out of one Province into the other: Or if the Straights of Anian run between both, the Tartars never were Navigators; and suppose they had been, they would not have cross’d without Horses, without which they knew not how to subsist.” To which we only say thus, That although Tartary now, and in former times, abounded in Horse, yet must we grant, that it hath been always so? or that the ancient Scythians, who we avouch first planted America, had such frequent use of them as the Tartars now. This may be controverted, for that these Scythians planting there in the Non-age of Time, presently after the Flood, the use of Horses was unknown, which the Ancient Poets testifie by their Fiction of Centaurs, who when first seen, the Horse and Rider were taken for one Creature. The like mistake the Mexicans had, when they saw the mounted Spaniards, a thousand running away from one Cavalier.
As to their coming thither of themselves, it may easily be confuted: Who knows not, that there is no Countrey a continu’d Pasture, but luxurious Vales separated with inaccessible Mountains, Lakes, and vast Wildernesses. But David Ingram relates, “That he saw some Horses in the Northern America, which the Mexicans, and other Conquests of the Spaniards never heard of:” Whereupon we may conclude, and we suppose without all peradventure, That the Americans have absolutely their Original from Tartary, which bordering Armenia, where Noah’s Ark first rested, hath a convenient way, though beyond the Artick Circle, through a temperate Climate betwixt Heat and Cold, to Cathay, in the same Parallel with the neighboring America.
CHAP. III.
First Discoverers of America. Christopher Colonus his Expedition.
Pet Bizari Res Genoan. lib. 16.
Christopher Colonus, generally (though by mistake) call’d Columbus, was Lib. 11. Hist. Georg. born in Arbizolo, a Village in the Dominion of Genoa, near Savona; his Christoph. Colonus’s Birth. Father liv’d by Fishing in the Midland-Sea: So that Sebastian Schroter, and others besides him, are mistaken, saying, Colonus was born in the City Cucureum, and descended of the Noble Family Pilistrelli: For Peter Bezarus, Colonus his Countrey-man, gives unquestionable Proofs of his mean Extract; and amongst other things, That the Common-wealth of Genoa refus’d to receive the great Legacy which Colonus left them in his Will, because they fondly thought it a derogation to their Honor, being so great a Republick, to take any thing of Bequest from a Fishers Son: Yet his Majesty of Castile thought otherwise, not onely enriching him with Wealth, and a fair Revenue for his Discovery of the West-Indies; but also, though of a low derivation, rais’d him to great Honor, Ennobling him the first of his Family with Dignities, Titles, and Escutcheon, which rank’d him in place among his Prime Nobility.
His Life.
Strange Accident. Hist. Peru.
Makes his Address at Genoa.
To the Portuguese,