Emanuel de Moraez, a Portuguese, in his history of Brazil, asserts that America has been wholly peopled by the Carthaginians and Israelites. He brings as a proof of this assertion the discoveries the former are known to have made at a great distance beyond the coast of Africa. The progress of which being put a stop to by the senate of Carthage, those who happened to be then in the newly discovered countries, being cut off from all communication with their countrymen, and destitute of many necessaries of life, fell into a state of barbarism. As to the Israelites, this author thinks that nothing but circumcision is wanted in order to constitute a perfect resemblance between them and the Brazilians.
George De Hornn, a learned Dutchman, has likewise written on this subject. He sets out with declaring, that he does not believe it possible America could have been peopled before the flood, considering the short space of time which elapsed between the creation of the world and that memorable event. In the next place he lays it down as a principle, that after the deluge, men and other terrestrial animals penetrated into that country both by sea and by land; some through accident, and some from a formed design. That birds got thither by flight; which they were enabled to do by resting on the rocks and islands that are scattered about in the Ocean.
He further observes, that wild beasts may have found a free passage by land; and that if we do not meet with horses or cattle (to which he might have added elephants, camels, rhinoceros, and beasts of many other kinds) it is because those nations that passed thither, were either not acquainted with their use, or had no convenience to support them.
Having totally excluded many nations that others have admitted as the probable first settlers of America, for which he gives substantial reasons, he supposes that it began to be peopled by the north; and maintains, that the primitive colonies spread themselves by the means of the isthmus of Panama through the whole extent of the continent.
He believes that the first founders of the Indian Colonies were Scythians. That the Phœnicians and Carthaginians afterwards got footing in America across the Atlantic Ocean, and the Chinese by way of the Pacific. And that other nations might from time to time have landed there by one or other of these ways, or might possibly have been thrown on the coast by tempests: since, through the whole extent of that Continent, both in its northern and southern parts, we meet with undoubted marks of a mixture of the northern nations with those who have come from other places. And lastly, that some Jews and Christians might have been carried there by such like events, but that this must have happened at a time when the whole of the new world was already peopled.
After all, he acknowledges that great difficulties attend the determination of the question. These, he says, are occasioned in the first place by the imperfect knowledge we have of the extremities of the globe, towards the north and south pole; and in the next place to the havock which the Spaniards, the first discoverers of the new world, made among its most ancient monuments; as witness the great double road betwixt Quito and Cuzco, an undertaking so stupendous, that even the most magnificent of those executed by the Romans cannot be compared to it.
He supposes also another migration of the Phœnicians, than those already mentioned, to have taken place; and this was during a three years voyage made by the Tyrian fleet in the service of King Solomon. He asserts on the authority of Josephus, that the port at which this embarkation was made lay in the Mediterranean. The fleet, he adds, went in quest of elephants teeth and peacocks to the western Coast of Africa, which is Tarsish; then to Ophir for gold, which is Haité, or the island of Hispaniola; and in the latter opinion he is supported by Columbus, who, when he discovered that island, thought he could trace the furnaces in which the gold was refined.
To these migrations which preceded the Christian æra, he adds many others of a later date from different nations, but these I have not time to enumerate. For the same reason I am obliged to pass over numberless writers on this subject; and shall content myself with only giving the sentiments of two or three more.
The first of these is Pierre De Charlevoix, a Frenchman, who, in his journal of a voyage to North America, made so lately as the year 1720, has recapitulated the opinions of a variety of authors on this head, to which he has subjoined his own conjectures. But the latter cannot without some difficulty be extracted, as they are so interwoven with the passages he has quoted, that it requires much attention to discriminate them.
He seems to allow that America might have received its first inhabitants from Tartary and Hyrcania. This he confirms, by observing that the lions and tigers which are found in the former, must have come from those countries, and whose passage serves for a proof that the two hemispheres join to the northward of Asia. He then draws a corroboration of this argument, from a story he says he has often heard related by Father Grollon, a French jesuit, as an undoubted matter of fact.