clue for which the position may be verified. The fact is certainly
probable, as Captain King seems to admit; and supposing it so, we can
easily conceive that the distance of time from the period of the
discovery above stated, would be quite sufficient to account for the
natives having no tradition of such a visit. Even a much shorter
period would be adequate for the total loss of almost any event in the
current history of a people, who had no other method of preserving it
than the impression it made on the senses, and to whom there was no
excitement to impress it on the memories of succeeding generations,
arising from the importance of the circumstances connected with it.
The possession of iron, indeed, supposing it traced to this source,
may be alleged too valuable, to have admitted such total forgetfulness
of the event which occasioned it. But this difficulty readily resolves
into a general remark, that even in more fortunate situations, the
authors and occasions of many discoveries and inventions are soon lost
sight of, in the more interesting experience of the utility that
commends them. Men, in fact, are always much more anxious to avail
themselves of the advantages which genius or accident has presented to
their notice, than careful to testify gratitude by ascertaining and
perpetuating the original sources to which they have been indebted. A
case, not indeed quite parallel, instantly occurs to recollection. How
few persons are there in this island, who have the smallest
conception, to whom it is they are indebted for the introduction of
that valuable vegetable the potatoe? The incident, no doubt, is
recorded in the history of our country. But is there one in a thousand
to whom the article is so familiar, that knows whence it came; or is
it conceivable, that, without such a record, any individual of the
present generation would have doubted for a moment that it was
indigenous to Britain? We might multiply such examples almost without
end. But the reader may like better to amuse himself with an enquiry