[Knickerbocker’s History of New York, Complete by Washington Irving]@TWC D-Link book
Knickerbocker’s History of New York, Complete

CHAPTER IV
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I cannot give my faith to this opinion.
I pass over the supposition of the learned Grotius, who being both an ambassador and a Dutchman to boot, is entitled to great respect, that North America was peopled by a strolling company of Norwegians, and that Peru was founded by a colony from China--Manco or Mungo Capac, the first Incas, being himself a Chinese.

Nor shall I more than barely mention that Father Kircher ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians, Budbeck to the Scandinavians, Charron to the Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skating party from Friesland, Milius to the Celtae, Marinocus the Sicilian to the Romans, Le Comte to the Phoenicians, Postel to the Moors, Martin d'Angleria to the Abyssinians, together with the sage surmise of De Laet, that England, Ireland, and the Orcades may contend for that honor.
Nor will I bestow any more attention or credit to the idea that America is the fairy region of Zipangri, described by that dreaming traveler Marco Polo the Venetian; or that it comprises the visionary island of Atlantis, described by Plato.

Neither will I stop to investigate the heathenish assertion of Paracelsus, that each hemisphere of the globe was originally furnished with an Adam and Eve.

Or the more flattering opinion of Dr.
Romayne, supported by many nameless authorities, that Adam was of the Indian race; or the startling conjecture of Buffon, Helvetius, and Darwin, so highly honorable to mankind, that the whole human species is accidentally descended foam a remarkable family of monkeys! This last conjecture, I must own, came upon me very suddenly and very ungraciously.

I have often beheld the clown in a pantomime, while gazing in stupid wonder at the extravagant gambols of a harlequin, all at once electrified by a sudden stroke of the wooden sword across his shoulders.
Little did I think at such times that it would ever fall to my lot to be treated with equal discourtesy, and that while I was quietly beholding these grave philosophers emulating the eccentric transformations of the hero of pantomime, they would on a sudden turn upon me and my readers, and with one hypocritical flourish metamorphose us into beasts! I determined from that moment not to burn my fingers with any more of their theories, but content myself with detailing the different methods by which they transported the descendants of these ancient and respectable monkeys to this great field of theoretical warfare.
This was done either by migrations by land or transmigrations by water.
Thus Padre Joseph d'Acosta enumerates three passages by land, first by the north of Europe, secondly by the north of Asia, and, thirdly, by regions southward of the Straits of Magellan.


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