Like the night torch of the gentle Guanahane savage, which Columbus saw as he gazed wearily from his vessel, looking, even after sunset, for the long hoped-for shore, and which told him that his desire was at last consummated, those indications of man, associated with the gigantic animals of a geological age, of whose antiquity there can be no question, speak to our hearts strange tales of the long past, and of the early dispersion and progressive distribution of a race created to "increase and multiply." The question of transit has also been raised as a difficulty by those who doubt our early colonization.

But this would seem easily removed.

It is more than probable that, at the period of which we write, Britain, if not Ireland, formed part of the European continent; but were it not so, we have proof, even in the present day, that screw propellers and iron cast vessels are not necessary for safety in distant voyages, since the present aboriginal vessels of the Pacific will weather a storm in which a _Great Eastern_ or a _London_ might founder hopelessly.
Let us conclude an apology for our antiquity, if not a proof of it, in the words of our last poet historian:-- "We believe that henceforth no wise person will be found who will not acknowledge that it is possible to bring the genealogies of the Gaedhils to their origin, to Noah and to Adam; and if he does not believe that, may he not believe that he himself is the son of his own father.

For there is no error in the genealogical history, but as it was left from father to son in succession, one after another.
"Surely every one believes the Divine Scriptures, which give a similar genealogy to the men of the world, from Adam down to Noah;[22] and the genealogy of Christ and of the holy fathers, as may be seen in the Church [writings].

Let him believe this, or let him deny God.