The problem as to the passage by the Aleutian Islands is converted into the question whether primitive people could have successfully crossed an interval from Asia of 130 miles to reach the island Miedna, 126 more to Behring’s Island, and then 235 to Attu, the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands, or nearly 500 miles in all, and to have crossed in such numbers as to affect the peopling of the new continent. There are some, like Winchell, who see no difficulty in the case.[551] There are no authenticated relics, it is believed, to prove the Tartar occupancy of the northwest of America.[552] That there have been occasional estrays upon the coasts of British Columbia, Oregon, and California, by the drifting thither of Chinese and Japanese junks, is certainly to be believed; but the argument against their crews peopling the country is usually based upon the probable absence of women in them,—an argument that certainly does not invalidate the belief in an infusion of Asiatic blood in a previous race.[553] The easterly passage which has elicited most interest is one alleged to have been made by some Buddhist priests to a country called Fusang, and in proof of it there is cited the narrative of one Hœi-Shin, who is reported to have returned to China in A.D. 499. Beside much in the story that is ridiculous and impossible, there are certain features which have led some commentators to believe that the coast of Mexico was intended, and that the Mexican maguey plant was the tree fusang, after which the country is said to have been called. The story was first brought to the attention of Europeans in 1761, when De Guignes published his paper on the subject in the 28th volume (pp. 505-26) of the Academy of Inscriptions.[554] It seems to have attracted little attention till J. H. von Klaproth, in 1831, discredited the American theory in his “Recherches sur le pays de Fousang,” published in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (2d ser., vol. xxi.), accompanied by a chart. In 1834 there appeared at Paris a French translation, _Annales des Empereurs du Japon_ (_Nipon o dai itsi rau_), to which (vol. iv.) Klaproth appended an “Aperçu de l’histoire mythologique du Japon,” in which he returned to the subject, and convinced Humboldt at least,[555] that the country visited was Japan, and not Mexico, though he could but see striking analogies, as he thought, in the Mexican myths and customs to those of the Chinese.[556] In 1841, Karl Friedrich Neumann, in the _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_ (new series, vol. xvi.), published a paper on “Ost Asien und West Amerika nach Chinesischen Quellen aus dem fünften, sechsten und siebenten Jahrhundert,” in which he gave a version of the Hœi-shin (Hœi-schin, Hui-shën) narrative, which Chas. G. Leland, considering it a more perfect form of the original than that given by De Guignes, translated into English in _The Knickerbocker Mag._ (1850), xxxvi. 301, as “California and Mexico in the fifth century.”[557]