WHO FOUND AMERICA FIRST?

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1635, 31 December 1912, Page 5

WHO FOUND AMERICA FIRST?

A TOMB AND ITS TALE.. . The idea of a Chinaman, as the discoverer of America may not be pleasing to all the citizens of the United Sattes, but curiums evidence lias just been found to support.the Chinaman's claim. An expedition which, with Sir Michael Conway among its leaders, has been excavating among {lie . ancient ruins' of Mexico and Yucatan, lias unearthed the remains of a 1 vast, populous, and highlycivilised city at Otuniba, twenty miles from the capithl of Mexico. Before Prescott's Aztecs or Peruvians roso to power, perhaps before Babylon was or Nineveh, men became proficient here in the arts of the building and painting, and, doubtless, in other arts. In a tomb of this buried city, fathoms deop beneath the earth, hns been foimd a small clay image of a Chinaman, unmistakable in dress and features. Near it lay the skeleton of a man not more than five feet high, with long arms, Mongolian skull, oiul bosido him a string of preen jade bends—another link in the Chinese theory, since real jade has never iroen found in Mexico. in the natural slato. The image, it isCsnid, was not a god or idol, but an ornamont—perhaps a portrait done in Clay by Somo prehistoric sculptor.- . It is computed that five thousand •years- ■ ago, roughly, 1 Chinese navigators may have crossed the. Pacific to build the ancient cities that lvera ruins when tho .Monlekaumas ruled in pride.