CHAPTER III.
ANTIQUITY OF AMERICA.
America, was first settled by the Israelites—Indians who came out from Egypt. [The View of the Hebrews, by Ethan Smith.] America was discovered by Columbus in 1492, and was peopled by Colonies in A.D., 1620, from Europe. The first settlement in New England was made at Plymouth, in the midst of a fertile country.—The Egyptians were an Ethiopian people. [Herodotus.]
The following authors are supposed to have referred to America in their writings:—
M. de Chazelles, when he measured the great pyramid in Egypt, found that the four sides of it were turned [built] exactly to the four quarters of the world, Europe, Asia, Africa and America, above three thousand years ago. During so long a space of time, there has been no alteration in the poles of the earth or the meridians, to have turned the pyramid.
The celebrated Theopompus, a learned historian and orator, flourished in the time of Alexander the Great, the Egyptian hero. In a book entitled "Thaumasia," a sort of dialogue is given between Midas the Phrygian, and Silenus. The book itself is lost, but Strabo refers to it, and Ælianus has given us the substance of the dialogue which follows. After much conversation, Silenus said to Midas that Europe, Asia and Africa were but islands, surrounded on all sides by the sea; but that there was a continent situated beyond these, which was of immense dimensions, even without limits; it was inhabited by men
