A good deal of stress has been laid at times on certain linguistic affiliations. Barton, in his New Views, sought to strengthen the case by various comparative vocabularies. Charles Farcy went over the proofs in his Antiquités de l’Amérique: Discuter la valeur des documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’Amérique avant la conquête des Européens, et déterminer s’il existe des rapports entre les langues de l’Amérique et celles des tribus de l’Afrique et de l’Asie (Paris, 1836). H. H. Bancroft (Native Races, v. 39) enumerates the sources of the controversy. Roehrig (Smithsonian Report, 1872) finds affinities in the languages of the Dakota or Sioux Indians. Pilling (Bibliog. of Siouan languages, p. 11) gives John Campbell’s contributions to this comparative study. In the Canadian Institute Proceedings (1881), vol. i. p. 171, Campbell points out the affinities of the Tinneh with the Tungus, and of the Choctaws and Cherokees with the Koriaks. Cf. also Ibid., July, 1884. Dall and Pinart pronounce against any affinity of tongues in the Contributions to Amer. Ethnology (Washington), i. 97. Cf. Short, No. Amer. of Antiq., 494; Leland’s Fusang, ch. 10.
[550] Behring’s Straits, first opened, as Wallace says, in quaternary times, are 45 miles across, and are often frozen in winter. South of them is an island where a tribe of Eskimos live, and they keep constant communication with the main of Asia, 50 miles distant, and with America, 120 miles away. Robertson solved the difficulty by this route. Cf. Contributions to Amer. Ethnology (1877), i. 95-98; Warden’s Recherches; Maury, in Revue des deux Mondes, Ap. 15, 1858; Peschel’s Races of Men, p. 401; F. von Hellwald in Smithsonian Report, 1866; Short, p. 510; Bancroft, Native Races, v. 28, 29, 54; and Chavanne’s Lit. of the Polar Regions, 58, 194—the last page shows a list of maps. Max Müller (Chips, ii. 270) considers this theory a postulate only.
[551] Contrib. to Amer. Ethnology, i. 96; Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 8th ed., 368; A. Ragine’s Découverte de l’Amérique du Kamtchatka et des îles Aléoutiennes (St. Petersburg, 1868, 2d ed.); Pickering’s Races of Men; Peschel’s Races of Men, 397; Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity. Dall (Tribes of the Northwest, in Powell’s Rocky Mountain Region, 1877, p. 96) does not believe in the Aleutian route.
On the drifting of canoes for long distances see Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 11th ed., ii. 472; Col. B. Kennon in Leland’s Fousang; Rev. des deux Mondes, Apr., 1858; Vining, ch. 1. Cf. Alphonse Pinart’s “Les Aléoutes et leur origine,” in Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie, session de 1872, p. 155.
[552] Cf. references in H. H. Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 54. We have an uncorroborated story of a Tartar inscription being found. Cf. Kalm’s Reise, iii. 416; Archæologia (London, 1787), viii. 304.
[553] Gomara makes record of such floating visitors in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Horace Davis published in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc. (Apr., 1872) a record of Japanese vessels driven upon the northwest coast of America and its outlying islands in a paper “On the likelihood of an admixture of Japanese blood on our northwest coast.” Cf. A. W. Bradford’s American Antiquities (N. Y., 1841); Whymper’s Alaska, 250; Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 52, with references; Contributions to Amer. Ethnol., i. 97, 238; De Roquefeuil’s Journal du Voyage autour du Monde (1876-79), etc. It is shown that the great Pacific current naturally carries floating objects to the American coast. Davis, in his tract, gives a map of it. Cf. Haven, Archæol. U. S., p. 144; Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc. (1883), xv. p. 101, by Thomas Antisell; and China Review, Mar., Apr., 1888, by J. Edkins.
[554] Recherches sur les navigations des Chinois du côte de l’Amérique et sur quelques peuples situés à l’extrémité orientale de l’Asie (Paris, 1761). It is translated in Vining, ch. 1.
[555] Examen Critique, ii. 65, and Ansichten der Natur, or Views of Nature, p. 132.
[556] Much depends on the distance intended by a Chinese li. Klaproth translated the version as given by an early Chinese historian of the seventh century, Li Yan Tcheou, and Klaproth’s version is Englished in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 33-36. Klaproth’s memoir is also translated in Vining, ch. 3. Some have more specifically pointed to Saghalien, an island at the north end of the Japan Sea. Brooks says there is a district of Corea called Fusang (Science, viii. 402). Brasseur says the great Chinese encyclopædia describes Fusang as lying east of Japan, and he thinks the descriptions correspond to the Cibola of Castañeda.
[557] Again with a commentary in The Continental Mag. (New York, vol. i.). Subjected to the revision of Neumann, it is reproduced in Leland’s Fusang (Lond., 1875). Cf. Vining, ch. 6, who gives also (ch. 10) the account in Shan-Hai-king as translated by C. M. Williams in Mag. Amer. Hist., April, 1883.