that it is only fifteen hundred miles distant from the
similar projection of Africa towards the west. The
direction of the trade winds in the South Atlantic is
such that it has often been the practice of sailing
vessels bound from England to South Africa to run clear
across the ocean on a long stretch till within sight of
the coast of Brazil before turning towards the Cape of
Good Hope. All, however, that we can deduce from accidental
voyages, like that of the Spaniard, Alvarez de Cabral,
across the ocean is that even if there had been no other
way for mankind to reach America they could have landed
there by ship from the Old World. In such a case, of
course, the coming of man to the American continent would
have been an extremely recent event in the long history
of the world. It could not have occurred until mankind
had progressed far enough to make vessels, or at least
boats of a simple kind.

But there is evidence that man had appeared on the earth
long before the shaping of the continents had taken place.
Both in Europe and America the buried traces of primitive
man are vast in antiquity, and carry us much further back
in time than the final changes of earth and ocean which
made the continents as they are; and, when we remember
this, it is easy to see how mankind could have passed
from Asia or Europe to America. The connection of the
land surface of the globe was different in early times
from what it is to-day. Even still, Siberia and Alaska
are separated only by the narrow Bering Strait. From the
shore of Asia the continent of North America is plainly