The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

Within a few years our school-books pointed to Cristoval Colon, or Columbus, and his crew, as the first within the range of history who 'passed far o'er the ocean blue' to this hemisphere. Now, however, even the school-books—generally the last to announce novel truths—say something of the Norsemen in America, though they frequently do it in a discrediting and discreditable way. However, the old Vikings have triumphed once more, even in their graves, and Professor Rafn can prove as conclusively that his fierce ancestry trod the soil of Boston as that the Mayflower Puritans followed in their footsteps. It is a dim old story, laid away in Icelandic manuscripts, and confirmed by but few relics on our soil; yet it is strong enough to give New England a link to the Middle Ages of Europe, with their wildest romance and strangest elements. It is pleasant to think that far back in the night there walked for a short season on these shores great men of that hearty Norse-Teuton race which in after times flowed through France into England, and from England through the long course of ages hitherward. Among the old Puritan names of New England there is more than one which may be found in the roll of Battle Abbey, and through the Norse-Norman spelling of which we trace the family origin of fierce sea-kings in their lowland isles or rocky lairs on the Baltic.

But there are older links existing between America and Europe than this of the Norseman. Of these the first is indeed buried in mystery—leading us back into that sombre twilight of 'symbolism,' as the Germans somewhat obscurely call the study of the early ages whose records are lost, and which can only be traced by reflection in the resemblances between mythologies which argue a common origin, and the monuments remaining, which seem to establish it. Yes, America has this in common with every country of Asia, Europe, and Africa: she has relics which indicate that at one time she was inhabited by a race which had perhaps the same faith, the same stupendous nature-worship, with that of the Old World, and which was, to reason by analogy, possibly identified by the same language and customs. What was this race, this religion, this language? Who shall answer? Men like Faber, and Higgins, and Lajard, with scores of others, have unweariedly gathered together all the points of resemblance between the religions and mythologies of the Hindus and Egyptians and Chinese, the Druids and the Phenicians, the Etruscans and the Scandinavians, and old Sclavonic heathen, and found in and between and through them all a startling identity: everywhere the Serpent, everywhere the Queen of Heaven with her child, everywhere the cup of life and the bread and honey of the mysteries, with the salt of the orgie, everywhere a thousand fibres twining and trailing into each other in bewildering confusion, indicating a common origin, yet puzzling beyond all hope those who seek to find it. So vast is the wealth of material which opens on the scholar who seeks to investigate this common origin of mythologies, and with them the possible early identity of races and of languages, that he is almost certain to soon bury himself in a hypothesis and become lost in some blind alley of the great labyrinth.

Certain points appear to have once existed in common to nations on every part of the earth previous to authentic history, and in these America had probably more or less her share, as appears from certain monuments and relics of her early races. They are as follows:—

1. A worship of nature, based on the inscrutable mystery of generation with birth and death. As these two extremes caused each other, they were continually identified in the religious myth or symbol employed to represent either.

2. This great principle of action, developing itself into birth and death, was regarded as being symbolized in every natural object, and corresponding with these there were created myths, or 'stories,' setting forth the principal mystery of nature in a thousand poetic forms.

3. The formula according to which all myths were shaped was that of transition, or the passing through. The germ, in the mother or in the plant, which after its sleep reappeared in life, was also recognized in Spring, or Adonis, coming to light and warmth after the long death of winter in the womb of the earth. The ark, which floats on the waters, bearing within it the regenerator, signified the same; so did the cup or horn into which the wine of life was poured and from which it was drunk; so too did nuts, or any object capable of representing latent existence. The passing into a cavern through a door between pillars or rocky passes, or even the wearing of rings, all intimated the same mystery—the going into and the coming forth into renewed life.

4. But the great active principle which lay at the foundation of the mystery of birth and death, or of action, was set forth by the serpent—the type of good and evil, of life and destruction—the first intelligence. It is the constant recurrence of this symbol among the early monuments of America, as of the Old World, which proves most conclusively the existence at one time of a common religion, or 'cultus.' It was probably meant to signify water from its wavy curves, and the snake-like course of rivers, as inundation seems to have been, according to early faith, the most prolific source of the destruction of nature, and yet the most active in its revival.

There are in Brittany vast lines of massy Druidic stones, piled sometimes for leagues in regular order, in such a manner as to represent colossal serpents. Those who will consult the French Dracontia will be astonished at the labor expended on these strange temples. Squier has shown that the earth-works of the West represent precisely the same symbol. Mexico and South America abound, like Europe and the East, in serpent emblems; they twine around the gods; they are gods themselves; they destroy as Typhon, and give life in the hands of Esculapius.

In the United States, as in Europe and in the East, there are found in steep places, by difficult paths, always near the banks of streams, narrow, much-worn passages in rocks, through which one person[10 - An Inquiry laid by me it few years ago before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania elicited information as to several of these 'gates' in that State. I have not the work by me, but I believe that FALES DUNLAP, Esq., of New York, asserts on Rabbinical authority, in an appendix to Sod or the Mysteries, that the Hebrew word commonly translated as 'passover' should be rendered 'passing through.'] can barely squeeze, and which were evidently not intended for ordinary travel. The passing through these places was enjoined on religious votaries, as indicating respect for the great principle of regeneration. The peasants of Europe, here and there, at the present day, continue to pass through these rock or cave doors, 'for luck.' It was usual, after the transition, whether into a cave, where mysteries, feasts, and orgies were held, significant of 'the revival,' or merely through a narrow way,—to bathe in the invariably neighboring river; the serpent-river or water which drowns organic life, yet without which it dies.

In England, at a comparatively recent period, and even yet occasionally in Scandinavia, the peasantry plighted their troth by passing their hands through the hole in the 'Odin-stones,' and clasping them. Beads and wedding rings and 'fairy-stones,' or those found with holes in them, were all linked to the same faith which rendered sacred every resemblance to the 'passing through.' The graves of both North and South America contain abundant evidence of the sacredness in which the same objects were held. I have a singularly-shaped soapstone ornament, taken from an Indian grave, whose perforation indicates the 'fairy-stone.' The religious legends of Mexico and of Peru are too identical with many of the Old World to be passed over as coincidences; the gold images of Chiriqui, with their Baal bell-ringing figures, and serpent-girt, pot-bellied phallic idols, are too strikingly like those of Old Ireland and of the East not to suggest some far-away common origin. I have good authority for saying that almost every symbol, whether of cup or dove, serpent or horn, flower or new moon, boat or egg, common to Old World mythology, may be found set forth or preserved with the emphasis of religious emblems in the graves or ruined temples of ancient North America.

The mass of evidence which has been accumulated by scholars illustrative of a common origin of mythologies and a centralization of them around the serpent; or, as G.S. Faber will have it, the Ark; or, as some think, the heavenly bodies; or, as others claim, simply a worship of paternity and maternity,—is immense. Why they should claim separate precedence for symbols, all of which set forth the one great mystery how GOD 'weaves and works in action's storm,' is only explicable on the ground that 'every scholar likes to have his own private little pet hypothesis.' Enough, however, may be found to show that this stupendous nature-worship was held the world over,—possibly in the days of a single language,—in America as in ancient Italy, or around the sacred mountain-crags of India; in Lebanon as in Ireland, in the garden-lands of Assyria, and in the isles of the South.

Yet all this is as yet, for the truly scientific ethnologist, only half-fact, indefinite, belonging to the cloud-land of fable. The poet or the thinker, yearning for a new basis of art, may find in the immense mass of legends and symbols an identification between all the forms of nature in a vast harmony and mutual reflection of every beautiful object; but for the man of facts it is unformed, not arranged, useless. We know not the color of the race or races which piled the Western mounds; their languages are lost; they are vague mist-gods, living in a dimmer medium than that of mere tradition. So ends the first period of intercommunication between Asia—the probable birthplace of the old mythology—and America.

II. The Chinese Discoverers Of Mexico In The Fifth Century

But there is a second link, ere we come to the Norsemen, which is strong enough to merit the favorable consideration of the scientific man, for it rests on evidence worthy serious investigation. I refer to the fact that the Chinese-Annals, or Year Books,—which, according to good authority, have been well kept, and which are certainly prosaic and blue-bookish enough in their mass of dry details of embassies and expenditures to be highly credible,—testify that in the fifth century the Chinese learned the situation of the great peninsula Aliaska, which they named Tahan, or Great China. Beyond this, at the end of the fifth century,—be it observed that the advances in discovery correspond in time in the records,—they discovered a land which Deguignes long after identified with the north-west coast of America. With each discovery, the people of these new lands were compelled, or were represented at court as having been compelled, to send ambassadors wife tribute to the Central Realm, or China.

But there had been unofficial Chinese travelers in Western America, and even in Mexico itself, before this time. Those who have examined the history of that vast religious movement of Asia which, contemporary with Christianity, shook the hoary faiths of the East, while a higher and purer doctrine was overturning those of the West, are aware that it had many external points or forms in common with those of the later Roman church, which have long been a puzzle to the wise. To say nothing of mitres, tapers, violet robes, rosaries, bells, convents, auricular confession, and many other singular identities, the early Buddhist church distinguished itself by a truly catholic zeal for the making of converts, and, to effect this, sent its emissaries to Central Africa and Central Russia; from the Sclavonian frontier on the west to China, Japan, and the farthest Russian isles of the east. On they went; who shall say where they paused? We know that there are at this day in St. Petersburg certain books on black paper taken from a Buddhist temple found in a remote northern corner of Russia. It was much less of an undertaking, and much less singular, that Chinese priests should pass, by short voyages, from island to island, almost over the proposed Russian route for the Pacific telegraph to America. That they did so is explicitly stated in the Year Books, which contain details relative to Fusang, or Mexico, where it is said of the inhabitants that 'in earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha. But it happened in the second "year-naming" "Great Light" of Song (A.D. 458), that five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.'

But I am anticipating my subject. In another chapter I propose, on the authority of Professor Neumann, a learned Sinologist of Munich, to set forth the proofs that in the last year of the fifth century a Buddhist priest, bearing the cloister name of Hoei-schin, or Universal Compassion, returned from America, and gave for the first time an official account of the country which he had visited, which account was recorded, and now remains as a simple fact among the annual registers of the government.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

The Spur Of Monmouth

'Twas a little brass half-circlet,
Deep gnawed by rust and stain,
That the farmer's urchin brought me,
Plowed up on old Monmouth plain;
On that spot where the hot June sunshine
Once a fire more deadly knew,
And a bloodier color reddened
Where the red June roses blew;—

Where the moon of the early harvest
Looked down through the shimmering leaves,
And saw where the reaper of battle
Had gathered big human sheaves.
Old Monmouth, so touched with glory—
So tinted with burning shame—
As Washington's pride we remember,
Or Lee's long tarnished name.

'Twas a little brass half-circlet;
And knocking the rust away,
And clearing the ends and the middle
From their buried shroud of clay,
I saw, through the damp of ages
And the thick disfiguring grime,
The buckle-heads and the rowel
Of a spur of the olden time.

And I said—what gallant horseman,
Who revels and rides no more,
Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
On his heel that weapon wore?
Was he riding away to his bridal,
When the leather snapped in twain?
Was he thrown and dragged by the stirrup,
With the rough stones crushing his brain?

Then I thought of the Revolution,
Whose tide still onward rolls—
Of the free and the fearless riders
Of the 'times that tried men's souls.'
What if, in the day of battle
That raged and rioted here,
It had dropped from the foot of a soldier,
As he rode in his mad career?

What if it had ridden with Forman,
When he leaped through the open door,
With the British dragoon behind him,
In his race o'er the granary floor?
What if—but the brain grows dizzy
With the thoughts of the rusted spur;
What if it had fled with Clinton,
Or charged with Aaron Burr?

But bravely the farmer's urchin
Had been scraping the rust away;
And cleansed from the soil that swathed it,
The spur before me lay.
Here are holes in the outer circle—
No common heel it has known,
For each space, I see by the setting,
Once held some precious stone.