productions, as it is one of the most useful employments of our faculties, so it is a subject which well deserves the notice of the historian, and the contemplation of the philosopher.+

But it is now time to quit general description for particular history. Many objects indeed are hereafter to be considered, which, being common to all our West Indian possessions, will be comprehensively discussed; but in previously treating of the origin and progress of our national establishments in them, it seems proper to discourse of each island separately; and, as the most important, I begin with JAMAICA.

The West Indies are much indebted, on this account, to the East, but I believe that the first of all fruits, the anana or pine-apple, was car. ried from the West to the East. It was found by Columbus in all the West India islands, and P. Martyr, whose decades were chiefly compiled out of Columbus's letters to king Ferdinand, writes of it as follows: Alium fru&um se invictissimus rex Ferdinandus comedisse fatetur, ab iisdem terris advectum, sqammosum, pinús nucamentum adspectu, forma colore amulatur, sed mollitie par melopeponi, sapore omnem superat bortensem fructum: non enim arbor est, sed herba, carduo persimilis, aut acantho. Huic et rex ipse palmam tribuit. Ex iis ego pomis minimè comédi: quia unum tantùm è paucis allatis reperêre incorruptum, cæteris ex longa navigatione putrefactis. Qui in nativo solo recentia ederunt illorum cum admiratione suavitatem extollunt. Who does not lament that king Ferdinand did not leave a slice for his honest historiographer? The term Anana is, I believe, eastern: The West Indian name of this fruit was fan-polo-mie.

APPENDIX TO BOOK I.

Containing some additional observations concerning the origin of the Charaibes.

HAV

AVING ventured, in the second chapter of this book, to adopt the opinion of Hornius* and other writers, who assign to some of the natives of America an oriental origin, and suppose that they anciently crossed the Atlantic ocean, I beg the reader's indulgence while I briefly state the evidence whereon I attempt to rebuild a system, which it has become fashionab' among some late philosophers, to reject and deride.

So many volumes have indeed already been written, and so much useless learing exhausted, on the subject of the first peopling America, that I doubt the reader will shrink with disgust from an investigation which perhaps has given rise to as great a number of idle books, as any question (some disputed points in divinity excepted) that ever distracted the attention of mankind.

It may be necessary therefore to premise, that I mean to apply my argument to the Charaibe nation only; a people whose manners and characteristic features denote, as I con

* De originibus Americanis, lib. ii. c. vi.

ceive, a different ancestry from that of the generality of the American nations.

It is not wonderful that the notion of their transatlantic origin should have been treated with derision.-The advocates for this opinion, like the framers of most other systems, by attempting to prove too much, have gained even less credit than they deserve. In contending that the New world was first planted by adventurers from the Old, they universally take for granted, that some of those adventurers returned, and gave accounts of their discoveries; for they suppose that America was well known to the ancients; that not only the Phenicians made repeated voyages thither; but that the Egyptians and Carthaginians also, voluntarily crossed the Atlantic, and planted colonies at different periods in various parts of the new hemisphere.

In support of these opinions, quotations have been made from poets, philosophers and historians: But, if we reflect on the limited extent of navigation before the discovery of the compass; the prevailing direction of the winds between the tropics; and various other obstructions, we may I think very confidently determine, (notwithstanding the traditions preserved by Plato; the poetical reveries of Seneca the tragedian, and many other passages in ancient writers, which admit of various interpretations, and therefore prove nothing), that no vessel ever returned from any part of America before that of Columbus.-This conclusion, however, does by no means warrant us in pronouncing, that no vessel ever sailed thither from the ancient continent, either by accident or design, anterior to that period. That such instances did actually happen, and by what means, I shall now endeavour briefly to point

out.

There is no circumstance in history better attested, than that frequent voyages from the Mediterranean along the African

coast, on the Atlantic ocean, were made both by the Phenicians and Egytians, many hundred years before the Christian era. It is true, that almost all the accounts which have been transmitted to us in profane history of those expeditions, are involved in obscurity, and intermixed with absurdity and fable; -but it is the business of philosophy to separate, as much as possible, truth from falsehood; and not hastily to conclude, because some circumstances are extravagant, that all are without foundation, We know from indisputable authority, that the Phenicians discovered the Azores, and visited even our own island before the Trojan war. That their successors the Carthaginians, were not less distinguished for the spirit of naval enterprize, we may conclude from the celebrated expedition of Hanno; who about two hundred and fifty years before the birth of our Saviour, sailed along the African coast, until he came within five degrees of the line. It was the Cathaginians who discovered the Canary islands, and it appears from the testimony of Pliny,§ that they found in those islands, the ruins of great buildings, (vestigia Edificiorum), a proof that they had been well inhabited in periods of which history is silent.

+ Procopius, secretary to Belisarious in the time of Justinian, mentions in his Vandalica, book ii. that there were then standing in Africa Tingitana, (Tangier), two columns erected by the Chananites that fled from Joshua the son of Nun. Eusebius also writes, that those Chananites which were driven out by the Israelites conducted colonies to Tripoli, in Africa. (Bobart in Canaan, cap. xxiv.)—that they navigated the western ocean (cap. xxxvi.) and were in Gaul and Britain (cap. xlii.) See also Sammes's Phenician History of Britain.

This was published with Stephanus de Urbibus, by Berkley, in 1688, and in the minor geographers at Oxford. I believe it was first published in Greek, by Sigismund Gelenius, who died in 1554.

§ Lib. vi. c. xxxii. de Fortunatis Insulis.

So far, we have clear historical evidence to guide us in our researches. Not less clear and certain (though less numerous) are the accounts of the Phenician navigation, down the Arabian gulph, or Red sea, to distant parts of Asia and Africa, in ages still more remote than those that have been mentioned. In the voyages undertaken by king Solomon, he employed the ships and mariners of that adventurous and commercial people. With their assistance he fitted out fleets from Ezion-geber, a port of the Red sea, supposed to be the Berenice of the Greeks. Of those ships, some were bound for the western coast of the great Indian continent; others, there is reason to believe, turning towards Africa, passed the southern promontory, and returned home by the Mediterranean to the port of Joppa.

In support of this account of the flourishing state of ancient navigation in the Arabian gulph, we have, first of all, the highest authority to refer to; that of the Scriptures. Next to which we may rank the testimony of Herodotus, the father of profane history: the truth of whose well-known relation of a Phenician fleet doubling the cape of Good Hope six hundred years before the birth of Christ, was never disputed, I believe, until our learned countryman, the author of the late American History, delivered it as his opinion, that "all the information "we have received from the Greek and Roman authors, of "the Phenician and Carthaginian voyages, excepting only the "short narrative of Hanno's expedition before mentioned, is "of suspicious authority."

I shall quote from Herodotus the passage alluded to, that the reader may judge for himself of the veracity of the venera ble old Grecian. It is as follows. "Libya is every where en"circled by the sea, except on that side where it adjoins to

Robertson's History of America, vol. i. p. 9.