The attempts to designate particular nations as the original peoplers of the American continent, whether they were the Lost Tribes of Israel the Phwnicians or the Chinese, have so utterly failed to convince inquirers, that they have been generally abandoned. The autochthonic theory, the theory of indigenous origin, has had many strong arguments produced in its favor. Some of its advocates suppose that the Creator placed an original pair of human beings here, as Holy Scripture teaches that He did in the Eastern Hemisphere. But these arguments come short of conviction. The advocates of the theory of development that would find the ancestor of man in the monkey, have abandoned all idea of

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

the change having taken place here, as the American continent has furnished no species of the apes, nor the remains of any such species from which man could have been developed.

They all admit that narrow-nosed apes could alone have been the ancestors of man, and no such apes -- no catarrhine simiadce -- have existed here.

When we look at the conditions on either side of the continent, we cannot suppose that it was at all impossible for men, at any indefinitely remote period, to have found their way hither. The climatic changes of past periods, at some time, may have made the route by Behring's Straits entirely practicable. The route by the Aleutian Islands is not difficult now to canoe navigators. The Pacific currents frequently cast the wrecks of Japanese vessels upon our northwestern shores. The islands of the South Pacific afforded a probable way of communication, and it is believed that many have disappeared, comparatively recently, beneath the surface. On the Atlantic side the difficulties were by no means insurmountable, even if we ignore "the lost Atlantis." The tradewinds and equatorial currents carried Cabral and his Portuguese fleet, bound around the Cape of Good Hope, to the American shores, and led to the accidental discovery of Brazil.