We submit that in drifting before the wind, or even in a voyage of discovery, many islands lying almost in the wake of the ship might be passed at night without discovery, but it is absolutely impossible to pass a continent without seeing it and touching it at some point.
Men find islands peopled and evidence of a former civilization which the inhabitants can give no account of, and it excites little or no interest, but if a continent is discovered with civilized people, and evidence of a greater civilization in its past history, they at once get excited and begin to evolve a fine-spun theory out of the thin air, and charge it all up to the Phoenicians, lost ten tribes of Israel, the inhabitants of the sunken continent of Atlantis, or that God created another Adam and Eve, from whom the people of this continent had their origin. In the classic language of Puck, "What fools these mortals be." They can people the islands of the Pacific without another Adam and Eve, or the aid of the Phoenicians, but if it is a continent under consideration, it is impossible. Why not, in the study of ethnology and history, follow the leading of facts, rather than force the facts to prove a pet theory?
Besides the ancient evidence given, there is much modern proof that South America, at least, was first settled by the Malays from Polynesia.
Captain Cook found at Watteoo three natives of Otaheite, who had lost their ocean-path and had been blown away 550 miles from the land of their birth.
Kotzebue found on one of the Caroline isles a native of Ulea, who had been driven by the wind, after a voyage of eight months, to this spot, which is fifteen hundred miles from his native isle. He and his companions had performed this remarkable voyage in an open single canoe with outriggers. Numerous similar involuntary exploits of this maritime race are related. A singular case is mentioned in the official narrative of the Japan Expedition, conducted by Commodore Perry. On his return voyage, in the open west Pacific Ocean, he took on board a boat-load of twelve savages, who called themselves Sillibaboos. They could give no intelligible idea of the island from whence they came, and which has not been discovered. They were lost and were drifting before the wind, they knew not where, and had been wandering upon the unknown waters many days; but they were in good condition, and supporting themselves well upon the produce of the prolific ocean which swelled around them. Amid the numerous clusters of islands which gem its bosom, they would probably have soon found a new home.
One of the most remarkable voyages recorded of modern times was that of Captain Bligh and his companions. It seems that the worthy captain of the good ship-of-war Bounty was sent by the British Government in 1787, to transplant the bread-fruit and other esculents, indigenous to the tropical islands of the Pacific, to Jamaica, and other islands of the West Indies belonging to Great Britain. He remained more than a year in Otaheite, completed his cargo of seeds and plants and set sail for Jamaica. But while they were yet in sight of the island, a majority of the crew, headed by Lieutenant Christian, mutinied and seized the ship. Captain Bligh and twenty men who were faithful to him were put in an open boat only twenty-five feet long. Only five days' rations of wine, water, bread and pork were thrown into it with them. They had a compass, but no weapons, mast or sail and the gunwales rose only a few inches above the surface of the water. In this frail craft they were turned adrift to perish upon the ocean. The mutineers doubtless thought that they would be sunk by the first storm that might arise or be massacred by the first savages they might meet. These desperate mutineers were incited to commit this crime by an aversion to leave the lazy life they had led the past year with the amiable and profligate natives of Otaheite, among whom they had formed attachments, and an unwillingness to resume the hardships of sailors under the strict discipline of Captain Bligh. This officer proved himself a hero, able to meet successfully the dangers of his desperate situation, and to triumph over them by his skill and courage, and lived to be promoted to the rank of admiral, under Lord Nelson, for services at the battle of Copenhagen. With a pair of apothecary's scales he divided the scant provisions of five days to make them last for fifty in which he hoped to reach the Philippine Islands, or Java, nearly four thousand miles distant. Favored by the monsoon, which blew steadily from the east (six months later it would have blown in the opposite course), in the direction of those islands, by stormless showers, by alternate rowing, bailing and resting the crew, by his persevering watchfulness, and their implicit obedience to his judicious orders, he accomplished in that time this almost miraculous voyage, with the loss of only one man, who was killed by the savages of an unknown island lying in his course, with whom he attempted to barter for supplies.
Remember this successful voyage of nearly four thousand miles (farther than across the Atlantic Ocean) from the Society Islands to Timour, was made in fifty days. Moreover, it was made in an open boat, inferior to those mentioned by Homer and Virgil, or to any sculptured upon the monuments of Egypt and Assyria, and with only the tenth part of the provisions necessary for such an enterprise. This voyage shows that the Malays or the Arabians could have accomplished a similar feat of nautical skill in past ages.
Again we are indebted to Prof. Edward Fontaine for this remarkable story. Should the reader care to follow the fortunes of Christian and his fellow mutineers he will find the entire account in the sixth chapter of "How the World Was Peopled."
The Malay empire began to decline about the tenth century, when their continental possessions were taken from them by the Tartar Khans, Mohammedan sultans and rajahs, who founded new dynasties in China, Farther India and Hindostan. They also lost their distant island colonies, and their civilization waned in Asia. Myriads of them, dwelling upon the islands near that continent, degenerated into the fierce and daring pirates who were so long the terror of the Eastern seas. Others, more remote, lost even the use of the compass, and sank into the condition of the Sandwich and Society Islanders; while those in Peru, separated long from their Asiatic mother-country, and thrown on their own resources, established and maintained an original civilization which amazed their Spanish conquerors.
There is evidence of ancient civilization in the ruins found on many of the larger islands of the Pacific Ocean, especially the Society, Friendly, Easter and Sandwich groups, but these ruins are essentially different from anything found in America.