Mythical Monsters

El Edrisi, who, in common with the geographers of the period, believed in a great antarctic continent, after describing Sofala with its mines of gold, abundance of iron, &c., jumps at once to the mainland of Wák Wák, which he describes as possessing two towns situated on a great gulf (Carpentaria?), and a savage population.119

The two small towns may very well have been encampments of the aborigines, or trading stations of Malay merchants.

It may be noted that this identification of Wák Wák is in opposition to the view entertained by some commentators; for example, Professor de Goeje of Leyden has recently identified the Silâ islands (which had previously been considered as being Japan) with Corea, and Wák Wák with Japan; but this does not agree with El Edrisi’s account of the people being black, unclothed, and living on fish, shell, and tortoises (turtles), without gold, commerce, ships, or beasts of burden. Elsewhere El Edrisi says the women are entirely naked, and only wear combs of ivory ornamented with mother of pearl.

Lane thinks the Arabs applied the name of Wák Wák to all the islands with which they were acquainted on the east and south-east of Borneo. Es Serafee, beside the details given in a previous note, also says, “From one of these islands of Wák Wák there issueth a great torrent like pitch, which floweth into the sea, and the fish are burnt thereby, and float upon the water.” And Hasan, in the story quoted above, has, in order to reach the last of the seven islands of Wák Wák, to pass over the third island, the land of the Jinn, “where by reason of the vehemence of the cries of the Jánn, and the rising of the flames about, of the sparks and the smoke from their mouths, and the harsh sounds from their throats, and their insolence, they will obstruct the way before us,” &c. &c. I think that in each of these latter instances, the volcanic islands of Java, and other of the Sunda islands are indicated.

The information in our possession is as yet too meagre to permit of our indulging in any profitable consideration of the sources from which originated those nations which peopled America during the very early pre-traditional ages, of which geological evidence is accumulating daily. In fact, the theories on this point have advanced so little beyond the limits of speculation that I feel it unnecessary to do more than quote one of them, as summarized in the ensuing extract. “Professor Flowers, in remarking upon recent palæontological investigations, which prove that an immense number of forms of terrestrial animals that were formerly supposed to be peculiar to the Old World are abundant in the New; and that many, such as the horse, rhinoceros, and the camel, are more numerous in species and varieties in the latter, infers that the means of land communication must have been very different to what it is now, and that it is quite as likely that Asiatic man may have been derived from America as the reverse, or both may have had their source in a common centre, in some region of the earth now covered with sea.”120

The most commonly accepted theory with regard to the origin of those who have peopled the American continent, within the limits of tradition, is that they are of Asiatic descent, and that the migration has been effected in comparatively recent times by way of Behring Straits, and supplemented by chance passages from Southern Asia by way of the Polynesian islands, or from the north of Africa, across the Atlantic. There are, however, some who elaborate Professor Flowers’ suggestion, and contend, in opposition to the more generally received opinion, that the peopling of the present countries of the Old World has in fact been effected from the New.

For instance, a proficient Aztec scholar, Senor Altamirano121 of Mexico, argues that the Aztecs were a race, originating in the unsubmerged parts of America, as old as the Asiatics themselves, and that Asia may in fact have been peopled from Mexico; while Mr. E. J. Elliott, in quoting him, says: “From the ruins recently found, the most northern of any yet discovered, the indications of improved architecture, the work of different ages, can be traced in a continual chain to Mexico, when they culminate in massive and imposing structures, thus giving some proof by circumstantial evidence to Altamirano’s reasoning.”

Again, “Dr. Rudolf Falb122 discovers that the language spoken by the Indians in Peru and Bolivia, especially in Quichua and Aymara, exhibits the most astounding affinities with the Semitic languages, and particularly with the Arabic – in which tongue Dr. Falb himself has been skilled from his boyhood. Following up the links of this discovery, he has first found a connecting link with the Aryan roots, and, secondly, has arrived face to face with the surprising revelation that the Semitic roots are universally Aryan. The common stems of all the variants are found in their purest condition in Quichua and Aymara, from which fact Dr. Falb derives the conclusion that the high plains of Peru and Bolivia must be regarded as the point of exit of the present human race.”

On the other hand, Mr. E. B. Tylor, in the course of an article upon Backgammon among the Aztecs,123 which he argues must have reached them from Asia, and very likely through Mexico, points out that the myths and religion of the North American tribes contain many fancies well known to Asia, which they were hardly likely to have hit upon independently, and which they had not learned from white men: “Such as the quaint belief that the world is a monstrous tortoise floating on the waters; and an idea which the Sioux have in common with the Tartars, that it is sinful to chop or poke with a sharp instrument the burning log on the fire.” He quotes Alexander von Humboldt as having “argued years ago that the Mexicans did and believed things which were at once so fanciful and so like the fancies of the Asiatics that there must have been communication. Would two nations,” he asks, “have taken independently to forming calendars of days and years by repeating and combining cycles of animals, such as tiger, dog, ape, hare, &c.? Would they have developed independently similar astrological fancies about these signs governing the periods they began, and being influential each over a particular limb or organ of men’s bodies? Would they, again, have evolved separately out of this consciousness the myths of the world and its inhabitants having, at the end of several successive periods, been destroyed by elemental catastrophes?”

He adds, “It may very well have been the same agency which transported to Mexico the art of bronze-making, the computation of time by periods of dogs and apes, the casting of nativity, and the playing of backgammon.”

Then, again, we have the theory of those, now indeed few in number, who hold that the present Indian inhabitants of America were a distinctly indigenous race. Lord Kaimes, in his Sketches of the History of Man, says, “I venture still further, which is to conjecture that America has not been peopled from any part of the Old World.” Voltaire had preceded him in this line of argument, relying on ridicule rather than on reason. “The same persons that readily admit that the beavers of Canada are of Canadian origin, assert that the men must have come there in boats, and that Mexico must have been peopled by some of the descendants of Magog.”124

Missionaries of various sects have endeavoured to identify the Red man with the lost ten tribes. Adair conceived the language of the Southern Indians to be a corruption of Hebrew, and the Jesuit Lafitan, in his history of the savages of America, maintained that the Caribee language was radically Hebrew.

Mr. John Josselyn,125 in an account of the Mohawks, states that their language is a dialect of the Tartars, and Dr. Williamson, in his history of North Carolina, considers it can hardly be questioned that the Indians of South America are descended from a class of the Hindoos in the southern part of Asia.

Amongst others, Captain Don Antonio del Rio, who described the ruins of an ancient city in Guatemala, believed that they were the relics of a civilization founded by Phœnician colonists who had crossed the Atlantic ocean; and yet another theory is propounded by Mr. Knox,126 who considers the extinct Guanches, formerly inhabiting the Canary and Cape de Verde islands, to have closely resembled the Egyptians in certain particulars. He goes on to observe, “Now cross the Atlantic, and in a nearly parallel zone of the earth, or at least in one not far removed, we stumble all at once upon the ruined cities of Copan and Central America. To our astonishment, notwithstanding the breadth of the Atlantic, vestiges, of a nature not to be doubted, of a thoroughly Egyptian character reappear – hieroglyphics, monolithic temples, pyramids; who erected these monuments on the American continent? Perhaps at some remote period the continents were not so far apart, they might have been united, thus forming a zone or circle of the earth occupied by a pyramid-building people.”

It is not impossible that all of these theories may be correct, and that numerous migrations may have been made at various periods by different nations, the most facile would of course be that from North-Eastern Asia by way of the Aleutian islands, for, as the author of Fu-sang well remarks, a sailor in an open boat might cross from Asia to America by that route in summer time, and hardly ever be out of sight of land; and this in a part of the sea generally abounding in fish, as is proved by the fishermen who inhabit many of these islands, on which fresh water is always to be found. But it is more than likely that the direct route, from the islands of Japan to the coast of California or Mexico, was also occasionally followed, voluntarily or involuntarily, by mariners impelled by enterprise, religious motives, or stress of weather.

Colonel B. Kennon, as an evidence of the possibility of junks performing long ocean voyages, adduces the instance of a Japanese junk picked up by an American whaler two thousand three hundred miles south-east of Japan, and of others which had drifted among the Aleutian islands nearly half-way over to San Francisco; and in noting the resemblance and probable co-origin of the Sandwich Islanders with the Japanese, he adverts to the “ancient and confirmed habit of both Japanese and Chinese of taking women to sea with them, or of traders keeping their families on board, which would fully account for the population of those islands,” or, to extend the argument, of points on the American continent. The Jewish element might easily be introduced through this channel, for the occasional admixture of Jewish blood both among the Chinese and Japanese is so strongly marked, as to have induced some authors to contend for the absolute descent of the latter people at least from Jewish parentage.

It must also be remembered that the waters of both the North and South Pacific are peculiarly favourable to the navigation of small craft, and that Captain Bligh, after the mutiny on board the Bounty, was able to safely perform a journey of two thousand miles in an open boat; while all the islands both in North and South Polynesia must necessarily have been gradually peopled by the drifting over the ocean of stray canoes.

Again, as the tradition of the existence of a large continent west of the African coast was extant amongst the Egyptian priests long before the days of Solon, and, as I shall show hereafter, among the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, it is, I think, more than probable that both Phœnician and Egyptian mariners, either acting under a Royal Commission, or influenced by mercantile considerations, would endeavour to discover it, and, as in the case of Columbus, would have no difficulty in stretching across the Atlantic before a fair trade wind, though they might be less successful than him on their return.

The possibility of the existence of a large island or continent, midway between the Old and New World, within the traditional period, is included in the important question, which is still sub judice amongst geologists, whether the general disposition of land and water has or has not been variable during past ages. Sir Charles Lyell held the first view, and was of opinion127 that complete alternations of the positions of continent and ocean had repeatedly occurred in geological time.

The opposite idea has been suggested at various dates by eminent authorities, suggested rather than sustained by elaborate arguments, until recently, when the question has been re-examined by Mr. Wallace and Dr. Carpenter.

The former, in that chapter of island life devoted to the permanence of continents, dwells forcibly upon Dr. Darwin’s inference from the paucity of oceanic islands affording fragments of either Palæozoic or Secondary formations “that perhaps during the Palæozoic and Secondary periods neither continents nor continental islands existed where our oceans now extend; for, had they existed, Palæozoic and Secondary formations would in all probability have been accumulated from sediment derived from their wear and tear; and these would have been at least partially upheaved by the oscillations of level which must have intervened during these enormously long periods. If, then, we may infer anything from these facts, we may infer that, where our oceans now extend, oceans have extended from the remotest period of which we have any record; and, on the other hand, that where continents now exist, large tracts of land have existed, subjected no doubt to great oscillations of level, since the Cambrian period.”

I am not aware whether Dr. Darwin has expressed himself more authoritatively on this point in later works, or whether the whole question has been discussed in detail otherwise than by Mr. Wallace in the chapter referred to, in which he quotes what must, I think, after all, only be taken in the light of a suggestion as an auxiliary to the powerful arguments which he himself has enunciated in favour of a similar conclusion. There is no doubt that the paucity of any but volcanic or coralline islands throughout the greatest extent of existing oceans has a certain but not absolute significance, so far as recent geological epochs are concerned.

There is another line of reasoning, debated by Mr. Wallace, based on the formation of the Palæozoic and Secondary strata from the waste of broken continents and islands occupying generally the site of the existing continents, and separated by insignificant distances of inland sea or extensions from the adjacent oceans. It is soundly based on their lithological structure, as generally indicative of a littoral and shallow water origin, but it seems to me to be only positive so far as it shows that, throughout geological time, some land has existed somewhere within the limits of the present upheaval, and simply negative as to what may or may not have been the condition of what are now the great ocean spaces of the world. Indeed, it would at first sight seem only reasonable to infer, that the very depressions which caused the inundations of Europe and Asia, during the deposition of any important formation, would imply a corresponding elevation elsewhere, in order that the same relative areas of land and water might be maintained.

This view has, however, been reduced in its proportions by Dr. Carpenter, who has levelled the results of the recent researches by the Challenger expedition against the advocates of the intermutations of land and ocean, and, in pursuing another line of reasoning from Mr. Wallace, has estimated the solid contents of ocean and land above the sea-level respectively, as bearing the proportion of thirty-six to one. So that, supposing all the existing land of the globe to sink down to the sea-level, this subsidence would be balanced by the elevation of only one thirty-sixth part of the existing ocean floor from its present depth to the same level.

It must be admitted that the balance of argument was until lately considerably against the former existence of the country of Atlantis, whose ghostly outlines, however, we could almost imagine to be sketched out by faint contours in the chart illustrative of the North Atlantic portion of the Challenger investigations. But it was not so overwhelming as to entitle us to ignore the story entirely as a fable. I do not conceive it impossible that some centrally situated and perhaps volcanic island may once have existed, sufficiently important to have served as the basis of simple legends, which, under the enchantment of distance and time became metamorphosed and enriched.

Mr. A. R. Grote suggests that it is simply a myth founded on the observation of low-lying clouds in a sun-flushed sky, which gave the appearance like islands on a golden sea.

Mr. Donelly, on the other hand, in a very exhaustive and able volume, contends first, that Atlantis actually existed, and secondly, that it was the origin of our present civilization, that its kings are represented by the gods of Greek mythology, and that its destruction originated our Deluge story.

The well-known story is contained in an epic of Plato, of which two fragments only remain, found in two dialogues (the Timæus and the Critias). Critias is represented as telling an old-world story, handed down in his family from his great-grandfather Dropidas, who had heard it from Solon, who had it from the Egyptian priests of Sais.128

Ælian, again, contains an extract from Theophrastus, who wrote in the time of Alexander the Great, which can hardly imply anything else than an acquaintance with America. It is in the form of a dialogue between Midas the Phrygian and Silenus.

The latter informs Midas that Europe, Asia, and Africa were but islands surrounded on all sides by sea, but that there was a continent situated beyond these which was of immense dimensions, even without limits, and that it was so luxuriant as to produce animals of prodigious magnitude. That there men grew to double the size of themselves, and that they lived to a far greater age, that they had many cities, and their usages and laws were different from their own; that in one city there was more than a million of inhabitants, and that gold and silver were there in vast quantities.

Diodorus Siculus gives an account of what could only have been the mainland of America, or one of the West Indian islands; it is as follows.

“After cursorily mentioning the islands within the Pillars of Hercules, let us treat of those further ones in the open ocean, for towards Africa there is a very large island in the great ocean sea, situated many days’ sail from Libya towards the west.

“Its soil is fruitful, a great part rising in mountains, but still with no scarcity of level expanse, which excels in pleasantness, for navigable rivers flow through and irrigate it. Gardens abound, stored with various trees and numerous orchards, intersected by pleasant streams.

“The towns are adorned with sumptuous edifices, and drinking taverns, beautifully situated in gardens, are everywhere met with; as the convenient situation of these largely invites to pleasure, they are frequented during the summer season.

“The mountain region possesses numerous and large forests, and various kinds of fruitful trees. It everywhere presents deep valleys and springs suitable for mountain recreations.

“Indeed the whole of this island is watered with springs of sweet water, which gives rise not merely to the pleasure of its inhabitants, but also to an accession of their health and strength.

“Hunting furnishes all kinds of game, the abundance of which in their banquets leaves nothing to be desired.

“Moreover, the sea which washes against this island abounds with fish, since the ocean, from its nature everywhere, affords a variety of fish.

“Finally, the temperature is very genial, from which it results that the trees bear fruit throughout the greater part of the year.

“Lastly, it excels so much in felicity as to resemble the habitations of the gods rather than of men.

“Formerly it was unknown, on account of the remoteness of its situation from the rest of the world, but accident disclosed its position. The Phœnicians have been in the habit of making frequent passages, for the sake of commerce, from the very oldest dates, from whence it resulted that they were the founders of many of the African colonies, and of not a few of those European ones situated to the west; and when they had yielded to the idea which had entered their minds, of enriching themselves greatly, they passed out beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the sea which is called the Ocean, and they first founded a city called Gades, on the European peninsula, and near the straits of the Pillars [of Hercules] in which, when others had flocked to it, they instituted a sumptuous temple to Hercules. This temple has been held in the utmost veneration both in ancient times and during later periods up to the present day; therefore many Romans of illustrious nobility and reputation pronounce their vows to that god, and happily discharge their obligations.

“The Phœnicians for this reason continued their exploration beyond the Pillars, and when they were sailing along the African coast, being carried off by a tempest to a distant part of the ocean, were driven by the violence of the storm, after a period of many days, to the island of which I have spoken, and having first acquainted themselves with its nature and pleasing characters, introduced it to the notice of others. On that account, the Tyrrhenians, also obtaining the empire of the sea, determined on a colony there, but the Carthaginians prevented them, both because they feared lest many of their citizens, being allured by the advantages of the island, might migrate there, and because they wished to have a refuge prepared for themselves against a sudden stroke of fortune, if by chance the Carthaginian Republic should receive any deadly blow, for they contemplated that they would be able, while yet powerful at sea, to transport themselves and their families to the island unknown to the victors.”129

Among the many proofs which may be cited of community of origin between the Asiatics and certainly a large proportion of the American population is the practice of scalping enemies, quoted by Herodotus as prevalent amongst the Scythians, and universally existing amongst all tribes of North American Indians; the discovery of jade ornaments amongst Mexican remains, and the general esteem in which that material is held by the Chinese; the use of the Quipos among the Peruvians, and the assertion in the I-king, or Book of Change, one of the oldest of the Chinese Classics, that “The ancients knotted cords to express their meaning, but in the next age the sages renounced the custom and adopted a system of written characters;”130 the discovery of the meander pattern among Peruvian relics, and the common use of this ornamentation on Chinese vases and tripods, at dates long preceding the Trojan era, in which it is commonly supposed to have originated; the similarity of the features of Chinese, and other Mongols, with those of various Indian tribes; the resemblance of masks and various other remains to Chinese patterns discovered recently by Desirée de Charnay in Central America; and the reserve and stolid demeanour of both races. A good illustration of this is afforded by the story told of the celebrated statesman Sieh Ngan (A.D. 320-385), in Mayer’s Chinese Reader’s Manual; it could be imagined to apply to any Indian sachem.

It is related of Sieh Ngan that, at the time when the capital was menaced by the advancing forces of Fukien, he sat one day over a game of chess with a friend, when a despatch was handed to him, which he calmly read and then continued the game. On being asked what the news was, he replied: “It is merely an announcement that my young people have beaten the enemy.” The intelligence was, in fact, of the decisive rout of the invaders by the army under his brother Sieh She and his nephew Sieh Hüan. Only when retired within the seclusion of his private apartments did he give himself up to an outburst of joy. The very expression “my young people” is the equivalent of “my young men” which the Indian chief would have employed.

A singular custom prevails among the Petivaces, an Indian tribe of Brazil.131 “When they are delivered of a child, and ought to have all the ceremony and attendance proper to a lying-in woman, the husband presently lies down in his hammock (as if he had been brought to bed himself), and all his wives and neighbours come about and serve him. This is a pleasant fancy indeed, that the woman must take all the pains to bring the child into the world, and then the man lie down and gruntle upon it.”