Hesperides. We make no doubt that the Incas of Peru were brought to that country by the ships of the same Phœnician people. But the Incas were very few in number, and came to Peru with mechanical knowledge and the knowledge of pottery far in advance of that possessed by the settlers in Central America, and their works initiated for the purpose of improving water courses and constructing roads were far more beneficial to mankind than the temples erected to Baal in Central America, although the Incas, though more intelligent than the settlers in Central America, were not yet emancipated from belief in that heathen god. Manco Capac, the first Inca, may have been left, for aught we know, by Solomon’s fleets from Eziongeber, when in search of rosewood, mahogany, and gold, and may have been one of those skilled mechanics that built Solomon’s Temple, and constructed the basins for it, and thus have become enlightened in religious matters, although he had not yet advanced so far as to entirely abandon the worship of Baal.

We are not unaware that Peruvian tradition introduces Capac into Peru at a much later period, but no confidence can be placed in dates suggested by a people utterly unacquainted with letters or figures, and we make no suggestion as to the exact time when the first Inca showed himself in Peru. It may be asked what we are to say in regard to the storied Atlantis, and especially, what shall we say to the fancies of Ignatius Donnelly, who has written such a beautiful romance in regard to that island supposed by him to have existed, and have been the actual birthplace of man. Our reply is that Central America was the only true Atlantis; and that Atlantis sunk in the ocean only when its discoverers became weakened in the face of the barbarous people who surrounded them and lost their supremacy in the commercial world among the nations. Beyond what was true of Central America, Atlantis was a dream of fancy at an age of the world when fancy supplied the place of facts to an uninstructed people.

NOTE.

I am under strong obligations to Mr. George R. Howell, Archivist of the New York State Library, for the aid he has given me in selecting from ancient Greek and Roman authors their substantial statements in regard to what they considerered in their day to have been discoveries in the western world.