“‘In matters of marriage, it is the law that the (intending) son-in-law must erect a hut before the door of the girl’s house, and must sprinkle and sweep the place morning and evening for a whole year. If she then does not like him, she bids him depart; but if she is pleased with him they are married. The bridal ceremonies are, for the most part, like those of China. A fast of seven days is observed for parents at their death, five for grandparents, and three days for brothers, sisters, uncles, or aunts. Images to represent their spirits are set up, before which they worship and pour out libations morning and evening; but they wear no mourning or fillets. The successor of the king does not attend personally to government affairs for the first three years. In olden times they knew nothing of the Buddhist religion, but during the reign Ta-ming of the Emperor Hiao Wu-ti, of the Lung dynasty (A.D. 458), from Ki-pin five beggar priests went there. They traveled over the kingdom, everywhere making known the laws, canons, and images of that faith. Priests of regular ordination were set apart among the natives, and the customs of the country became reformed.’” There are several other narratives which relate to Fu-sang, or to countries near it in situation. This, of them all, seems to describe most truthfully a real country. Fu-sang may have been Japan, or it may have been Mexico. Hwui Shin’s account differs very widely in some of its details, from our knowledge of either. All the literature of the subject of Chinese discoveries of America has been examined and reviewed in Mr. E. P. Vining’s excellent book, _An Inglorious Columbus_. Mr. Vining believes Fu-sang to be Mexico, and the _fu-sang_ tree, in his view, is the maguey. When we come to the Scandinavian records, we find much that is not only plausible but indisputable evidence of the validity of their claims. We know that the Scandinavian vikings, splendid old rascals, in their many-oared galleys, often sailed far out into the waters of the Atlantic. In the year 860, one of these glorious cut-throats, Naddoddr (pronounce it if you can!), was blown upon the coast of Iceland. In 876 a similar experience befell another viking, and he reported having seen in the distance the coast of an unknown shore. In the year 981, Eric the Red, an outlaw of Iceland, sailed in search of this coast, and, finding it, set a bad example to future real estate dealers by naming its bleak length Greenland. Subsequent to this discovery, according to the sagas of Iceland, frequent visits to the south were made, and one Bjarni, distancing all previous explorers, found a fertile country to which he gave the name of Vinland. This was in the year 985, and, although the stories of these exploits are vague and untrustworthy enough in detail, there seems little doubt that Bjarni really visited the eastern coast of America at that date.