If, in the following pages, Your Majesty should recognise Your own portraiture in that of Hiram the Great, it is such as truth and history have designed and coloured;--fawning flattery and false adulation have not added even a thought to embellish, where Patriotism has so nobly consolidated. The Building of Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem, by Hiram of Tyrus, was not more generous, and liberal in Religious sentiments, than were your own,--as Protestant King of Prussia,--in laying the corner-stone of the Catholic Cathedral of Cologne,--the fervent words at which ceremony, Time will hallow within his Archives: nor was your own branch of Christianity forgotten or neglected; for the Sacred City of Jerusalem previously recorded your Majesty's munificence in promulgating the Divine Faith of Salvation! For the peace of Europe, and for the prosperity of Prussia,--for the advancement of Religious and Civil Liberty,--Education, Literature, the Arts and Sciences,--may the Disposer of Events prolong the life, and intellectual vigour of Your Majesty, to the utmost verge of venerable age; and when the monument shall enclose Your earthly remains, may Your subjects feel, that Your Royal Ancestor,--Frederick of Prussia,--was not the only Monarch of their father-land deserving the time-honoured, and historic surname of "The Great." I am flattered in the occasion which permits me to render this tributary offering,-- And to subscribe myself, YOUR MAJESTY'S Obedient and Obliged, GEORGE JONES. _London, June, 1843._ THE ORIGINAL HISTORY OF =ANCIENT AMERICA=. PREFACE. To the deep historic interest expressed by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, concerning the Aborigines of America, may be traced the production of this Work:--it led the Author originally to write the Israel-Indian Tragedy of "Tecumseh,"--illustrative of the patriotic race of the North, and which composition has received the honour of being dedicated to the Illustrious Prince by Special permission. The publication has been delayed only from the fact, that it would anticipate this branch of the present Work, and might consequently be injurious. The investigations necessary for writing of North America, called into action the study and observation of years in relation to South America: and in contemplating the newly-discovered Ruined Cities and Temples upon that moiety of the Western Continent, the very spirit of the Romance of Truth, seemed to find a voice in every Sculptured altar, column, stone, or pyramid: and when upon the enthusiastic pursuit of hidden knowledge, the sudden discovery of early Christianity and its Sacred Promulgator, were identified with the Western Hemisphere,--sanctioned as is the discovery by Holy-Writ,--History,--Tradition,--Customs,--and the oracular Sculptures of antiquity,--Language has no power to express the bounding feelings of the heart, when that original vision of the mind, became apparent, as the stern reality of historic truth.