OCR Text |
Show Again It Comes Back ON THE beach near Hussein Dey, a suburb of Algiers, was recently uncovered a Mexican vase, manifestly of Aztec manufacture. In accounting for the appearance of that queer ' find, it is explained that on th's beach in 1541 the fleet of Charles V was wrecked by a frightful storm after tho Emperor had failed to capture the city of Algiers. It is said that Cortez, the conqueror con-queror of Mexico, was one of the officers of the expedition and his ship, containing many treasures brought back from Mexico, was destroyed. de-stroyed. The present discovery is only one of many that have been made in a corner of the bay of Algiers. That is possibly true. At the same time it is Aztecs, a highly cultivated and enlightened people; peo-ple; that from the eastern shoro of that island expeditions sailed out and found at last the Pillars Pil-lars of Hercules, sailed between them, and founded found-ed tho civilization of northern Africa. And one thing that confirms that supposition is that the hieroglyphics on the monuments are the same that are found on the stones of overthrown monuments monu-ments in Yucatan, and that the same rules were followed in placing the monuments exactly north and south, and east and west; that many of the customs of the ancient Egyptians as we know thorn, were precisely like those that were the original customs of the Aztecs. They may have landed in Al' jrs, but they sailed on and on until the mouth of the Nile was reached and sailed up I that river as it flowed down through that match- A less valley and there built the nucleus of an em- V pire on precisely the same lines that their empire J at home, was built; that there in that wilderness ' they set up a light, which, shining on and on, I enlightened the surrounding countries and was the original civilization in northern Africa, in 7 western Asia and southern Europe. I It is not impossible to believe that, because It j gees back to a time to which no history and no j legends reach. The fact has to be established by , outside imperlsnable monuments, and if in the course of Nature the Isle of Atlantus sunk into the sea with all its civilization, and then there is fcund on the shores of North America in a ruined T state precisely such monuments as are still pre- f served in Egypt, with precisely the same signs A uiiOn them, the natural inference would be that those on our side are the older. And there we are lost in speculation, because it all goes back to a time so far In the distance that between then and now a thousand nations might have started from barbarism, grown to enlightenment, en-lightenment, then, destroyed by their own vices or by the wars of neighbors, have passed away. And still the interest remains, and it would not be at all a matter of surprise if one of these days there should be found such a record under the ruins of Central America as would prove that civilization first started there and by the slow unwinding of the ages, finally spread over the world. |