It is not impossible that all of these theories may be correct, and that numerous migrations may have been made at various periods by different nations, the most facile would of course be that from North-Eastern Asia by way of the Aleutian islands, for, as the author of _Fu-sang_ well remarks, a sailor in an open boat might cross from Asia to America by that route in summer time, and hardly ever be out of sight of land; and this in a part of the sea generally abounding in fish, as is proved by the fishermen who inhabit many of these islands, on which fresh water is always to be found. But it is more than likely that the direct route, from the islands of Japan to the coast of California or Mexico, was also occasionally followed, voluntarily or involuntarily, by mariners impelled by enterprise, religious motives, or stress of weather. Colonel B. Kennon, as an evidence of the possibility of junks performing long ocean voyages, adduces the instance of a Japanese junk picked up by an American whaler two thousand three hundred miles south-east of Japan, and of others which had drifted among the Aleutian islands nearly half-way over to San Francisco; and in noting the resemblance and probable co-origin of the Sandwich Islanders with the Japanese, he adverts to the "ancient and confirmed habit of both Japanese and Chinese of taking women to sea with them, or of traders keeping their families on board, which would fully account for the population of those islands," or, to extend the argument, of points on the American continent. The Jewish element might easily be introduced through this channel, for the occasional admixture of Jewish blood both among the Chinese and Japanese is so strongly marked, as to have induced some authors to contend for the absolute descent of the latter people at least from Jewish parentage. It must also be remembered that the waters of both the North and South Pacific are peculiarly favourable to the navigation of small craft, and that Captain Bligh, after the mutiny on board the _Bounty_, was able to safely perform a journey of two thousand miles in an open boat; while all the islands both in North and South Polynesia must necessarily have been gradually peopled by the drifting over the ocean of stray canoes. Again, as the tradition of the existence of a large continent west of the African coast was extant amongst the Egyptian priests long before the days of Solon, and, as I shall show hereafter, among the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, it is, I think, more than probable that both Phœnician and Egyptian mariners, either acting under a Royal Commission, or influenced by mercantile considerations, would endeavour to discover it, and, as in the case of Columbus, would have no difficulty in stretching across the Atlantic before a fair trade wind, though they might be less successful than him on their return.