When the Spanish missionaries first set foot upon the soil of America, in the fifteenth century, they were amazed to find the Cross was as devoutly worshipped by the red Indians as by themselves, and were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of St. Thomas or to the cunning device of the Evil One. The hallowed symbol challenged their attention on every hand and in almost every variety of form. It appeared on the bass-reliefs of ruined and deserted as well as on those of inhabited palaces, and was the most conspicuous ornament in the great temple of Gozumel, off the coast of Yucatan. According to the particular locality, and the purpose which it served, it was formed of various materials--of marble and gypsum in the open spaces of cities and by the way-side; of wood in the teocallis or chapels on pyramidal summits and in subterranean sanctuaries; and of emerald or jasper in the palaces of kings and nobles. When we ask the question how it comes that the sign of the Cross has thus been reverenced from the highest antiquity by the races of the Old and New Worlds, we learn that it is a reminiscence of the Garden of Eden, in other words, of Atlantis. Professor Hardwicke says: "All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story--jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision lay a paradise of holy joy--a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the mind, a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality." To quote again from the writer in the Edinburgh Review, already cited;