(From Olaus Magnus.)
The presence of the Basques on the coasts of North America long before the voyage of Columbus is often asserted,[537] and there is no improbability in a daring race of seamen, in search of whales, finding a way to the American waters. There are some indications in the early cartography which can perhaps be easily explained on this hypothesis;[538] there are said to be unusual linguistic correspondences in the American tongues with those of this strange people.[539] There are the reports of the earliest navigators, who have left indisputable records that earlier visitors from Europe had been before them, and Cabot may have found some reminders of such;[540] and it is even asserted that it was a Basque mariner, who had been on the Newfoundland banks, and gave to Columbus some premonitions of the New World.[541]
Certain claims of the Dutch have also been advanced;[542] and one for an early discovery of Newfoundland, in 1463-64, by John Vas Costa Cortereal was set forth by Barrow in his Chronological Hist. of Voyages into the Arctic Regions (London, 1818); but he stands almost alone in his belief.[543] Biddle in his Cabot has shown its great improbability.
In the years while Columbus was nourishing his purpose of a western voyage, there were two adventurous navigators, as alleged, who were breasting the dangers of the Sea of Darkness both to the north and to the south. It cannot be said that either the Pole Skolno, in his skirting the Labrador coasts in 1476,[544] or the Norman Cousin, who is thought to have traversed a part of the South American coast in 1488-89,[545] have passed with their exploits into the accepted truths of history; but there was nothing improbable in what was said of them, and they flourish as counter-rumors always survive when attendant upon some great revelation like that of Columbus.
[CRITICAL NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
A. Early Connection of Asiatic Peoples with the Western Coast of America.— The question of the origin of the Americans, whether an autochthonous one or associated with the continents beyond either ocean, is more properly discussed in another place of the present volume. We can only indicate here in brief such of the phases of the question as suppose an Asiatic connection, and the particular lines of communication.
The ethnic unity of the American races, as urged by Morton and others, hardly meets the requirements of the problem in the opinion of most later students, like Sir Daniel Wilson, for instance; and yet, if A. H. Keane represents, as he claims, the latest ethnological beliefs, the connection with Asia, of the kind that forms ethnic traces, must have been before the history of the present Asiatic races, since the correspondence of customs, etc. is not sufficient for more recent affiliation.[546] It should be remembered also, that if this is true, and if there is the strong physical resemblance between Asiatics and the indigenous tribes of the northwest coast which early travellers and physiologists have dwelt on, we have in such a correspondence strong evidence of the persistency of types.[547]
The Asiatic theory was long a favorite one. So popular a book as Lafitau’s Mœurs des Sauvages (Paris, 1724) advocated it. J. B. Scherer’s Recherches historiques et géographiques sur le nouveau monde (Paris, 1777) was on the same side. One of the earliest in this country, Benj. Smith Barton, to give expression to American scholarship in this field held like opinions in his New Views of the Origin of the Tribes of America (Philad., 1797).[548] Twenty years later (1816) one of the most active of the American men of letters advocated the same views,—Samuel L. Mitchell in the Archæologia Americana (i. 325, 338, 346). The weightiest authority of his time, Alex. von Humboldt, formulated his belief in several of his books: Vues des Cordillères; Ansichten der Natur; Cosmos.[549]