“No wonder,” each one will exclaim, “that our people are so thin after so much pressing of their ancestors; no wonder at our new-minted words, the old ones having been fused at a red heat in the central fires.” Here, too, is the secret of our burning eloquence. This is the source of our extraordinary architecture, borrowed, like an actor’s costume at a fancy ball, from huddled heaps of clothing made for others, and brought together in party-colored, but ill-sorted union. Looked at from this angle, we can account, too, for our mythological tendencies,—the invocations to Jove, when surprised; the devotion to Apollo in our magazines; the frequent use of the lyre in our trade; the love for bare shoulders, like Junos, in our divine assemblages; our leanings at night to Bacchus; and other customs and habits that creep out even from under pan-taletes. Greece at first took her Olympus from us; and we in the course of time have, like affectionate parents, borrowed it back again. From these varied proofs it is manifest that, before Columbus brought over to America specimens of the European stock existing in his time, our hemisphere had been hard at work firing up at Popocatepetl; scooping out harbors on our coasts; creasing our valleys in fluvial grooves for our fast-running craft and boats; feathering the future nests of a later posterity with materials for use; and in general laying in a large stock for a successful business to be taken up and carried on afterwards by those who should come back from their migrations to become large dealers in universal notions, general purveyors, forwarders and advancers on all kinds of property, from continents to a spool of cotton, from polar Alaska ice to West India warming-pans and peppery troches. How long it took them to flutter back to these old deserted nests, how many were lost before they had fairly got settled in them, and what broods now chirp, sing, and crow, through branches new and old, honest or brittle, these pages are full fledged to show. CHAPTER II. OF THE DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA DURING THE ELEVENTH, FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 1000–1607. America not discovered by Jason.—Lithographic Specimens attributed to the Northmen in the Eleventh Century curious, but by Skalds more Modern.—Bishop Berkeley’s Western Star not the First American Constellation.—Columbus offers a Continent at Private Sale; Isabella, a Spanish Lady, takes him up, and the Profits also.—Of Ferdinand’s Necklace.—Price of Eggs advanced in Spain.—England finally sees Something.—A Fish Story confirmed.—Discoveries which Columbus did not make.—Ponce de Leon.—Mexico unfortunately discovered.—The Straits of Magellan and other Straits.—De Soto at the Bottom of the Mississippi.—Champlain, a wise Man, founds Quebec upon a Rock.—Sir Walter Raleigh and him smoking.—The Mayflower anchored.—Hudson up Stream.