Humboldt, who inclines strongly toward the belief that there has been communication between America and southern Asia, is at a loss to account for the total absence on the former continent of the phallic symbols which play such an important part in the worship of India.[I-95] But he remarks that M. Langlès[I-96] observes that in India the _Vaichnava_, or votaries of Vishnu, have a horror of the emblem of the productive force, adored in the temples of Siva and his wife Bhavani, goddess of abundance. "May not we suppose," he adds, "that among the Buddhists exiled to the north-east of Asia, there was also a sect that rejected the phallic cult, and that it is this purified Buddhism of which we find some slight traces among the American peoples."[I-97] I think I have succeeded in showing, however, in a previous volume that very distinct traces of phallic worship have been found in America.[I-98] An ornament bearing some resemblance to an elephant's trunk, found on some of the ruined buildings and images in America, chiefly at Uxmal, has been thought by some writers to support the theory of a south-Asiatic origin. Others have thought that this hook represents the elongated snout of the tapir, an animal common in Central America, and held sacred in some parts. The resemblance to either trunk or snout can be traced, however, only with the aid of a very lively imagination, and the point seems to me unworthy of serious discussion.[I-99] The same must be said of attempts to trace the mound-builders to Hindustan,[I-100] not because communication between America and southern Asia is impossible, but because something more is needed to base a theory of such communication upon than the bare fact that there were mounds in one country and mounds in the other. It is very positively asserted by several authors that the civilization of Peru was of Mongolian origin.[I-101] It is not, however, supposed to have been brought from the north-western coasts of America, or to have come to this continent by any of the more practicable routes of communication, such as Bering Strait or the Aleutian Islands. In this instance the introduction of foreign culture was the result of disastrous accident. [Sidenote: MONGOL CIVILIZATION IN PERU.] In the thirteenth century, the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, sent a formidable armament against Japan. The expedition failed, and the fleet was scattered by a violent tempest. Some of the ships, it is said, were cast upon the coast of Peru, and their crews are supposed to have founded the mighty empire of the Incas, conquered three centuries later by Pizarro. Mr John Ranking, who leads the van of theorists in this direction, has written a goodly volume upon this subject, which certainly, if read by itself, ought to convince the reader as satisfactorily that America was settled by Mongols, as Kingsborough's work that it was reached by the Jews, or Jones' argument that the Tyrians had a hand in its civilization.