rostrum or beak had been detached from the prow and set upon an altar aft, among other memorial lares. In form it blended the graceful curve of the swan’s neck with the repulsive rugæ of the serpent’s expansive skin, characteristically sustained with the mythical “figure-head” of a dragon. In addition to the holes mortised in the true keel for the reception of the ribs, they were secured in place and rendered steadfast by a clamp attachment to an overlaying substitute for the modern keelson, to which they were firmly bolted, with a workmanlike precision that had defied the lapse of time, and decomposing agency of salts and exposure, a chance portion only of the metal being exposed. But to the lost art of hardening copper with a non-erosive alloy, its preservation was chiefly to be attributed. The larboard portion of the prow’s planking still retained the eye, consecrated as the watchful guardian of course and detector of danger. When the hull was raised from its long repose in the bed of the lagoon, which had formerly been an inlet of the La Plata, and thoroughly dried, it was restored, in a measure, to its former lightness, from which it was easy to conceive its swift progress over the waters when impelled by oars or a favoring gale, as it but slightly taxed the strength of twenty men to bear it upon their shoulders to its present resting place, in the outer patio of my museum built for its reception. Your description of the Kyronese lineaments favors a descent from the primal union of the Phœnician with the North African races. I have relics exhumed remote from the shores of the La Plata, of undoubted Morisco fabrication, some of which bear a date corresponding with the second century of our era. From these material evidences, we have conclusive proof that the currents evoked from the disgorgements of the Mediterranean’s tidal surplus, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the large river-drains of South America, by the La Plata estuary, in monsoon reciprocation, have proved the accidental highway of tempest-sped vessels, from the period when they were first built with a carrying capacity sufficient for the transportation of merchandise, and the free navigation of the inland seas with sails. The diversity of color, facial contour, and structural art of fabrication, plainly bespeak an intermixture of European, Asiatic, and African races with the aborigines of America. That the supply was accidental, and limited to the recurrence of causes happening after the lapse of long intervals, is apparent from the numerous depopulated cities, whose inhabitants, like those of old Heraclea, presumed upon their ritual intelligence to enslave the natives and barbarously treat them, until the arrogance of folly and over-indulgence opened a way for retributive judgment in total annihilation. Hence the mottled appearance of the natives in the neighborhood of the ruined cities of Mexico and Yucatan, derived from a