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similarity between a few of these drawings is to be taken as proof of their identity in origin. Other check data must be appealed to before even a useful working hypothesis can be formulated.'

That American civilisation owed its inception to, or received impetus from, Polynesian immigration is a theory which recommends itself to a growing number of adherents. Perhaps its most direct advocate is Prof. J. Macmillan Brown, Principal of Christchurch University, New Zealand, who sees in the architectural and other manifestations of the Incan culture of Peru a close resemblance to the megalithic culture of Easter Island, and this, again, he connects with Polynesia, seeing in the hermit isle of the Pacific a stepping-stone by way of which Polynesian arts and beliefs were introduced to American soil. He indicates that the Cyclopean work of some of the burial platforms in Easter Island is precisely the same in character as that to be found at Cuzco in Peru. On the brick-building civilisation of the ancient Andeans of Peru, Prof. Brown believes, a stone-building culture borrowed from the Pacific was superimposed by the Incas, who improved and refined upon it. He shows that certain plants which had been acclimatised in Polynesia, the banana and the plantain, the leaves of which are found in old Peruvian graves, flourished in South America, and from the presence of the sweet potato he assumes Polynesian influence on the Pacific coast of South America, where the tuber flourished exceedingly.

In certain South American customs and forms of artistic endeavour, too, Prof. Brown discerns evidences of Polynesian influence. The tiputa or poncho, the mantle with a single hole for the head, which is so generally worn from Mexico to the Argentine, he believes to be of western insular origin. The salivary ferments common to both areas, chicha and kava, he compares as having a unity of origin in Polynesian practice, and the chewing of the Andean coca with lime he likens to the practice of masticating the areca nut, which, in the Pacific, is also chewed with lime. Moreover, the Peruvian quipus, or system of knotted cords, the purpose of which was to serve as a mnemonic register for facts and numbers, and even to supply the

first words of songs and chants, he compares with the mnemonic sticks in use in Tahiti and among the Maori, who also possessed knotted cords somewhat resembling those in use in Peru. The umu or earth-oven of the Pacific, associated with the cult of cannibalism, also penetrated South America by way of the west coast, and the stone axe or adze of the western insular area was also adopted in the Pacific regions of South America.

Lastly, he infers the arrival of a considerable body of Polynesians on South American soil. Assisted by the Humboldt current, these adventurers landed on the coast near the site of Truxillo, and founded the now ruined city of Grand Chimu, where still stand three double-walled enclosures, each covering more than a hundred acres. Within that nearest to the coast are the foundations of many large edifices in front of hundreds of small cubicles, entered only from the roof. These, he believes, were barracks for the soldiery of the conquering intruders, who reserved them as a fortified retreat in the last resort. From the gateway there stretches into the sea, about a mile off, a weir, containing in the middle a dock large enough to accommodate an oceangoing craft, by the aid of which the garrison could, if necessary, make its escape. But the evidence by which he chiefly identifies the invaders as of Polynesian race is to be found in the cemetery outside the northern wall, in which not a single shard of pottery has been found— for of all the Pacific peoples, the Polynesians alone made no pottery, while the native Peruvians lavishly furnished the graves of their dead with ceramic mementoes. A tradition from Lambayeque, an ancient city farther to the north, has it that across the sea came a band of naked warriors who worshipped a god of green stone, and who ruled for a time in the neighbourhood and later disappeared.

From what part of Polynesia did these conquering immigrants come? Prof. Brown believes that the settlers in Grand Chimu were no mere haphazard adventurers, but came to Peru as the result of a definite quest for a new home. Searching for other land more or less known, they got into the track of the trade winds, and were unavoidably blown on to the Pacific coast of South

America. He thinks it not improbable that these voyagers came from the Marquesas, where alone in the Pacific area is to be found the combination of megalithic work and statuary reproduced in Incan Peru.

Setting aside the indirect character of much of Prof. Brown's evidence, it is obvious that such incursions as he describes could have had but a slight influence on American race and culture. The evidences of Polynesian ST influence in America are slender, and probably arose out of sporadic visitations, which, by reason of the very hostility of the race which made them—and the Polynesians were nowhere friendly disposed-could leave but little traces upon native art and custom. At the same time it is only fair to admit that salient striking customs and artifacts, once introduced, are usually persistent in character, and to find a highly involved and elaborate form of architectural science, such as the megalithic, in Peru, certainly justifies a respectful consideration of the assumption that it emanated from one or another of the Pacific regions where it is to be found.

The argument that America was not only peopled from Polynesia but also drew the seeds of her culture from that region is ably summarised by Mr Clark Wissler:

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Repeated efforts have been made to show that all the higher culture complexes of the New World were brought over from the Old, particularly from China or the Pacific Islands. Most of these writings are merely speculative or may be ignored, but some of the facts we have cited for correspondences to Pacific Island culture have not been satisfactorily explained. Dixon has carefully reviewed this subject, asserting in general that among such traits as blowguns, plank canoes, lime-chewing, head-hunting cults, the man's house, and certain masked dances common to the New World and the Pacific Islands, there appears a tendency to mass upon the Pacific side of the New World. This gives these traits a semblance of continuous distribution with the Island culture. Yet it should be noted that these traits, as enumerated above, have in reality a sporadic distribution in the New World, and that there are exceptions. On the other hand, there is no great a priori improbability that some of these traits did reach the New World from the Pacific Islands.'

The several routes possible to immigrants are the

Bering approach, that by way of the Atlantic currents, setting from the African coast to the shores of South America, the Middle and South Pacific currents traversing the ocean which separates Polynesia from South America, the Japan currents setting to the NorthEast, and the chain of islands connecting Europe with Labrador. The majority of these are certainly not very practicable for primitive voyagers, but there are numerous instances on record of Polynesian canoes drifting for six or eight hundred miles from their point of departure, and of Japanese junks stranded on the Pacific coast. Such voyagers as these carried, however, can scarcely have affected blood and culture to any great extent in regions already occupied, though there seems to be good evidence that they did so slightly.

Although artifacts of European character have been found in North America, and these perhaps antedate the well-ascertained settlements of the Norsemen there, no data sufficiently comprehensive or accurate have yet been gathered to permit us to say that early European man actually found his way to America by drift or land-bridge. That numerous traditions of a Western continent existed in the British Isles from an early period is, however, now generally admitted. In some cases these were probably mere echoes of the Norse discoveries, like the Venetian tale of the discoveries of the brothers Zeno, but those of them associated with Irish and Welsh legend are now receiving a greater measure of credence than formerly. Of late years much has been done to show that many regions which our grandfathers firmly believed to be traditional were actually known to European geographers long before the date generally accepted as that of their discovery. During the 19th century the venerable legend P of St Brendan was believed to enshrine quite as much of the essence of legend as any other of the Irish sagas of seafaring. The Norse tales of discovery in America and elsewhere were credible enough, but this Celtic epic of an earthly paradise was, of course, much too rich in matter of faery to carry conviction. Perhaps its most acceptable version is that to be found in the 15th-century Book of Lismore, compiled from much older materials, from which we learn that St Brendan, founder of the monastery of Clonfert, who flourished in the seventh

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century, prayed strenuously that a secret and hidden land might be shown him where he could dwell in hermitage secure from men. We are told that the saint travelled up and down the coast of Kerry, inquiring as rti he went for traditions of the Western continent.' At first he set sail in search of it in a ship made from the hides of beasts, but later in a large wooden vessel built in Connaught, which required a crew of sixty monks to navigate her. Success crowned his quest, and he came at last to an island 'under the lee of Mount Atlas,' a balmy and delectable region, where he dwelt in peace and security for many years.

The first appearance of St Brendan's Isle in cartography is in the Hereford map of 1275, where it occupies the latitude of the Canary group. Indeed in the Canary Isles a tradition still survives that St Brendan and his companions spent several years in the archipelago. Even as late as the 18th century an expedition sailed Dee from the Canaries in search of an island believed to be outside of those already known in the group, and to be that in which the saint had finally settled. 'It appears likely,' says Mr W. H. Babcock, that St Brendan in the sixth century wandered widely over the seas in quest of some warm island concerning which wonderful accounts had been brought to him, and found several such isles.'

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But Mr Babcock, no venturesome authority, it may be said, is of the opinion that early Irish voyagers may actually have settled in Newfoundland. He thinks that the legendary island of Brazil, once thought of as lying in the Atlantic, may have been the present Newfoundland, which seems to have been visited by Irish-speaking people. The name Brazil is probably composed of two Celtic syllables, 'breas' and 'ail,' each highly commendatory in implication, and that the geographical term Brazil, or O'Brasil, is of Irish origin cannot be doubted. In all probability the Irish monks whom early Norse settlers found in Iceland formed part of a great Celtic religious and missionary 'push,' or forward movement, which was pressing northward and eastward in the latter part of the eighth century, and the Irish who reached Newfoundland may have formed its western wing. Irish vessels of that period were of a tonnage sufficiently large to negotiate such a voyage with suc