early records of the Chinese. These are older than the
Irish legends, and date back to about the sixth century.
According to the Chinese story, a certain Hoei-Sin sailed
out into the Pacific until he was four thousand miles
east of Japan. There he found a new continent, which the
Chinese records called Fusang, because of a certain
tree--the fusang tree,--out of the fibres of which the
inhabitants made, not only clothes, but paper, and even
food. Here was truly a land of wonders. There were strange
animals with branching horns on their heads, there were
men who could not speak Chinese but barked like dogs,
and other men with bodies painted in strange colours.
Some people have endeavoured to prove by these legends
that the Chinese must have landed in British Columbia,
or have seen moose or reindeer, since extinct, in the
country far to the north. But the whole account is so
mixed up with the miraculous, and with descriptions of
things which certainly never existed on the Pacific coast
of America, that we can place no reliance whatever upon
it.

The only importance that we can attach to such traditions
of the discovery of unknown lands and peoples on a new
continent is their bearing as a whole, their accumulated
effect, on the likelihood of such discovery before the
time of Columbus. They at least make us ready to attach
due weight to the circumstantial and credible records of
the voyages of the Norsemen. These stand upon ground
altogether different from that of the dim and confused
traditions of the classical writers and of the Irish and