Grotins and Arias Montan at one time advanced the idea that the western coast of South America was peopled by some mutinous sailors from the fleets of King Solomon, who, in their endeavor to go away far enough to be out of reach, were driven by winds and chance to the Peruvian coast. Others have imagined that some of the lost tribes of Israel found their way eastward to America, by the way of China, to the Mexican coast. The same ideal tradition has made the lost tribes the fathers of the Iroquois Nation in the northeastern parts of the United States. An author, who will be quoted in another part of this work, scouts the idea that the rite, as performed in America, had any connection or common origin with the rite performed in Asia and Africa; but, true to his theory of the climatic causes of the origin of circumcision, he maintains that it originated here as it did elsewhere, being a performance born of climatic necessity. He is, however, dissatisfied with Father Acosta for not being more explicit in relation to the _modus operandi_ of the Mexican circumcision. The want of being explicit, and its consequences in this particular regard, may be inferred from a "Diatribe on Circumcision," by a Mr. Mallet, in an encyclopaedic dictionary of the last century, in which Mr. Mallet informs his readers that Mexicans were in the habit of _cutting off the ears and prepuces_ of the newly born. Herrera and Acosta agree with Clavigero in asserting that the Mexicans simply _bled_ the prepuce. Pierre d'Angleria and other contemporary writers are as emphatic in asserting that in the island of Cosumel, in Yucatan, on the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico and on the Florida coast, they have observed circumcision by the complete removal of the prepuce with a stone knife. The Spanish monk, Gumilla, relates that the Saliva Indians of the Orinoco circumcised their infants on the eighth day. These Indians also included the females in the observance of the rite. The same author tells us of the barbarous and bloody performances, in relation to the rite, of the nations on the banks of the Quilato and the Uru, as well as those dwelling along the streams that empty into the Apure. The same is said of the Guamo and of the Othomacos Indians; according to Gumilla, many of these Indians, in addition to the rite of circumcision, inflicted a number of cuts on the arms, legs, and over the body, to a degree that amounted to butchery, the child being reserved for this inhuman treatment until the age of ten or twelve years, that he might, by his greater powers of resistance and of recuperation, stand some chance of escaping alive from the ordeal. The friar mentions that in 1721 he found a child dying from this treatment, the wounds having become gangrenous and the child dying of pyaemia; prior to the operation the children were stupefied with some narcotic drink, and were insensible during its performance.[19]