a full knowledge of that in which he lived? It is admitted that the Romans were acquainted with India, and that Alexander himself penetrated there. Could those who had a knowledge of India have remained for any long time ignorant of China? and must not a knowledge of China have led to that of Tartary; and of Tartary (in process of time) to that of America; it being recollected that the Chinese, if not the Tartars, have been in all ages remarkably addicted to navigation? Such, I apprehend, was indeed the true path of discovery on the Asiatic side of the globe (but it was different undoubtedly on the European side, though by no means such as is commonly understood), and the name alone of Columbus is a record of it; for Columbus, a dove, is a synonyme of Turtur, a dove, by which symbol, Tartary, from their resemblance in name, was by the ancients enigmatically designated. By a like interpretation the name of Pizarro, one of the first conquerors in America, will be found to be only the same as Serapis, reversed; and I have somewhere met with an engraving, of either a gem or a statue, inscribed o Zeus Zegamis, in which North America was pourtrayed under a human figure sitting, with the threeheaded dog Cerberus, answering to South America, at his feet. So again Montezuma, supposed to be one of the great American heroes, I take to be no

other than an index, pointing by his name, monte summo, to the vast height of the Andes mountains. And thus again, the term Amazon I take to be compounded of alpha and μαζος or μαζον a breast, and to be the poetic or enigmatical name of the river Maranon, which having its chief course nearly parallel to the equator or first parallel of latitude from which all the others are reckoned, is referred to by the alpha or first letter; and as it runs round a district situate to the north of its mouth, which has a most striking resemblance to a female breast, that circumstance is denoted accordingly by the latter part of that name. And it is for the reader to pronounce whether the seated figure of the hieroglyphic groupe in Pl. IV., inserted in the sixth vol. post, as having the alpha inscribed over her head and all over her robe; as distinguished by a single female breast; as having a line or rod, a symbol of the equatorial line, in her hand; as having the foot of her throne inscribed by nine crosses, (or tens,) within circles, marking thereby ninety degrees or one quarter of the globe; and as having, in two several places, smoking-pipes, as indices, perhaps, from whence tobacco first came; is not likely to have been intended to represent America; while the other human figure, holding to the former a bird like a turtle dove, or turtur, standing over a vessel which has the shape of the country of China, and is in

scribed with marks as of bricks, pointing perhaps to the famous wall of China, from which limit Tartary begins, is not a like simple indication of this last country Tartary; and if the reader should be struck with the resemblance between this groupe in plate IV., and that of fig. 149, ante, which was intended to give a general idea of the groupe formed by the shadows of the moon, as viewed with the naked eye; I am, for my own. part, not disinclined to believe that such a similitude between the former and the appearances in the moon might have been intended, in order thereby to intimate that the course of the tides, which are so closely connected with the changes of the moon, was the true cause of the discovery of America on the European side. But however that may be, and at whatever period the old and new continents, as they are called, became known to each other; as they were separated from each other by a considerable tract of sea, it must at first have been considered as a discovery; and that it was made by the old continent is next to a certainty, from the immemorially abject state of the human species (which must necessarily, therefore, have been incurious and unenterprizing) in every part of the new continent. The latter, therefore, as between the two, would naturally acquire that name of the new continent, and as it is separated into two great portions, both which

became known as it were by a new birth, and probably about the same time, they are together aptly designated in the sign by two infants, thence called Gemini, or the Twins. In conformity with this same idea, the country of America is frequently typified in the inscriptions on ancient gems, under the name of the City of Naples, NEα TOλs, and its inhabitants as Neapolitans, NeαTOITW, just as the part of America first discovered on the European side, is at this day, so long after that event, cailed Newfoundland. Many ancient writings also treat of America under the name of Naples, or NEα woλis, and hence it was that a certain disease, which unquestionably had its origin in America, has been said to have become first known in Europe at the siege of Naples, about three centuries ago, (that is, about the time of the supposed first discovery of America,) but we should be nearer the real truth if we understand thereby not the city of that name in Italy, but the undiscovered country of America. The number of proofs that America was perfectly well known to the ancients is without limit, some of which will appear in the future progress of this volume, and others, most conclusive, in the next; but, to return to my subject, the reason for designating the third sign by the name of Gemini or the Twins, is not merely (as above in

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part assigned,) the circumstance of the continent of America being divided into two great separate portions. The true prototype of the sign is to be found in the West Indian Gulf, which lies in the middle between those two divisions of the continent, which gulf will be seen on inspecting the map, to resemble two boys, the head and face of the one situate in the smaller gulf of Mexico, and those of the other in the gulf of Panama, by Terra Firma, with their arms apparently intertwined together, as they are copied from their prototype

in

Fig. 152.

I conclude this article with observing, that a reason for ascribing the sign of the Twins to the double continent of America, yet stronger than either of the two above noticed, will result from