We may assume that the mystery of the unknown continent in the West excited the interest of the bold seafarers of antiquity as powerfully as it did that of the successful Spaniards a thousand or more years later. Deep-sea voyages, though not indeed the rule, were by no means a novelty in the classic age. We have evidence of this, not only in the expeditions that the ancients made by sea to India and China, but also in their frequent voyages to the most northern latitudes of Europe.

No one questions the medieval references to the arrival of 'Indians' on the German coast. The foreign appearance and customs of these seafarers, and the impossibility of learning anything more definite of their origin, led to the later assumption that they were Indians. We are equally justified in surmising that the earlier unknown foreigners, storm-driven to the German coast, described in the first century by the Gaelic proconsul, Pomponius Mela, who received them as a gift from a German chieftain, were also Indians.

A map showing traffic routes between China, India, and Rome about 100 A.D., published in the Proceedings of the Institute for Research in Comparative Religion of the University of Leipzig for 1922, contains impressive

evidence of the high development of intercommunication throughout the world at that period. The average reader notes with surprise the density of the road net between Europe and Asia - especially the great number of competing trade-routes lying between the tenth and fourteenth parallels of latitude and the numerous connections between Egypt and Asia Minor, and Sogdiana, Bactria, Gandhara, and down the Malabar coast. Besides this network of caravan and sea routes, the map also shows what an important part the valleys of such rivers as the Indus played at that time in world

commerce.

One especially important and engrossing aspect of this study of ancient highways is our ability to trace evidences of the diffusion of primitive Christian culture along their course. Such traces radiate over all the thenknown world. They teach us to appreciate the marvelous spread of this doctrine and show us how communication bridged even the broadest oceans long before the days of Columbus, even as far as the semicivilized states of America.

Primitive Christianity in America! It sounds like a fairy tale, a figment of the imagination, a flat denial of all that history has hitherto taught us. None

the less, the fragmentary remnants of a primitive Christian epoch in America survive to our own day. They have withstood the storms and destruction of a decade and a half of centuries, and are still recognizable despite the blind and brutal efforts of later propagandists of the faith to destroy every record of the culture that preceded their arrival. To-day or to-morrow may reveal still further evidence, concealed under the dust and humus of ancient ruins hidden in dense tropical forests, to add to our present knowledge.

When Spain subdued the more highly developed races of Central and South America, many records of their earlier civilization had already disappeared. The Christian symbols of the Spaniards impressed the native as something foreign, as alien adoptions to which he must accommodate himself as best he could. Yet many survivals of much older Christian observances had remained a continuous tradition in Peruvian and Mayan ceremonial. Orant remained orant, even under the later Incas, and the cross retained a place in the religious cults of Yucatan and Mexico long after its original significance as a symbol of a Supreme Being, brought to America from an older world, had been forgotten. Nothing could be blinder than to reject these hints, merely because the absence of literary remains among the people in whose midst they persisted leaves many facts regarding them in the realm of conjecture.

Besides the cross in its different forms, pictures of the dove and of the fish, in association with the cross, were very common as orant symbols in the art language bequeathed America by primitive Christianity. Native pottery, terra cotta, and textiles repeat these motives in profusion. Orants are depicted on Peruvian pottery, for

instance on jars from Trujillo, which to even the superficial observer bear a striking resemblance to Egyptian New Year's jars. Indeed, they copy these so truthfully that they would at once arouse the interest of an excavator fortunate enough to discover them in any of the ancient centres of Christian pilgrimage where similar articles are commonly found.

I have discovered thousands of these pottery jars at Menapolis with the picture of the Menas orant. From this centre they were carried far beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire to the remotest parts of the then-known world, to the far north, to the far east, and to the very heart of the Negro kingdoms of Africa upon the Blue Nile, and in Dongola. Nor need we confine ourselves to this single comparison. A remarkable similarity is discernible between certain Menas votive statuettes, especially Libyan female ex-votos, and corresponding figures of ancient American origin.

I believe traces of Christianity penetrated to Central and South America between 500 and 1000 A.D., and probably nearer the earlier than the later date. I should place the first preaching of this doctrine in Peru in the fifth or, at the latest, in the sixth century of the Christian era, and plan to present evidence of this in a work which will reproduce all the pertinent monuments of the Peruvian and Mayan civilizations of that period, with intermediate material, particularly from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia.

In this connection, we must lay stress upon an error into which both earlier and later scholars have fallen, when they accuse the missionary priests of the Spanish Conquest of crude falsification; I mean, not of forging antiquities and monuments, but of consciously and systematically falsifying Indian tradition. They assert

that the Jesuits in particular presumed to refine and modify the original polytheism of the natives in both South and North America, in an effort first to represent the native beliefs as originally monotheistic, so as to secure readier acceptance of the Christian conception of the Deity, and second to smooth the way for the conversion of the Indians by a skillful system of suggestive questioning.

The bewilderment of the missionaries when they discovered among the heathen natives, not only old forgotten Christian symbols, but even the legend that their chief deity, Perus Huiracocha, had come from a land across the ocean and that he was a tall, emaciated man with a long beard, naturally suggested that catechetical device. Even Rudolf Tschudi, who refuses to attach weight to this Indian tradition, finds it very remarkable that the natives handed down the memory of a migration of strangers into Central Peru, who taught a new doctrine strangers who, after the conquest by the Spaniards, survived in Indian folklore as apostles and saints.

ceedingly ancient ruined village, where there are walls of dressed though very roughly dressed-stone. The doorposts of the houses, some of which are more than two yards high, and the thresholds, are hewn from very large stones and there are traces of streets. The old Indians say their ancestors have told them that in ancient times, before they were ruled by the Incas, people of a different race, though only a few of them, came into the country. They were called Wirakotsa, and the natives followed them to hear their words. And now the Indians say they were saints. These people built highways which are still visible, as broad as a city street, with small retaining walls on both sides, and they erected rest houses along them a day's journey apart, the memory of which is still preserved. These are the people who built the village I mention. Some Indians recall having seen in this old village several tombs built of squarecornered stone flags, and plastered inside with white clay, which originally contained bones. To-day, however, no more bones or skulls are found.'

Reports like this of a pre-Columbian arrival of foreigners whose leaders, according to the legend, could have only been missionaries, certainly invite further study. They alone prove how mistaken is the obstinate refusal of students hitherto to consider the possibility that channels of influence ever existed between the ancient world and America. They invite us to a reconsideration of the entire question.

No plant is so frequently referred to in the literature of the world as the vine. In the Holy Scriptures vines, vineyards, and wine-presses are mentioned in about 250 passages, while wine is named 77 times, and there are 13 distinct Hebrew terms indicating wines of various sorts and ages, all rendered in our version of the Scriptures by the one word - wine.

From discoveries in the tombs and buried cities of Egypt we know that wine was used in that country from the remotest ages, and two jars, with inscriptions not yet interpreted, have been found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. The processes of viticulture and vinification are depicted by carvings in the grottoes of Beni Hassan, carvings executed probably a century before the time of Joseph. Then, as now, it was known that the best wine could only be grown on high gravelly soil, and the Egyptian vineyards were situated, not in the fertile basin of the Nile, but on the surrounding hills. Inscriptions of the time of the Pharaohs indicate seven different kinds of wine, and that a kind of ale was brewed from grain which is probably the progenitor of the pombe now used throughout Central Africa.

The earliest vessels for strong wine were skins of animals made into bags, the seams cemented with pitch or resin. Such were the wine-skins successfully employed by the wily Gibeonites in their negotiations with Joshua. These were succeeded by earthenware jars known as amphora, the size and shape of which are obviously modeled on the

primitive wine-skin. The amphora was glazed inside and not outside, the glazing being a resinous composition evidently copied from that used for wineskins. Its capacity was about three gallons, and its aperture was at the thick end or top, unlike the wine-skin, which was filled and emptied at the thin end or bottom. This simple but thoroughly practical vessel for containing wine remained in use without change for many centuries in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It was stored by thrusting the small end into the cellar floor of dry sand. When the first tier was complete it was covered up deeply with more dry sand, another tier of amphora was placed above it, also smothered in sand, and there it was left for years to mature at an even temperature. Such a cellar was found when the palace of Pharaoh Hofra at Tahpanhes in Lower Egypt was excavated about forty years ago.

All the sacred writers deprecate the abuse of wine-not one of them forbids its use in moderation. Daniel was a strict abstainer in his youth, although in later life he seems to have felt the need of something stronger than water. The first chapter of Daniel is the earliest temperance-tract, inspired, no doubt, by the evils arising from the abuse of strong drink which Daniel witnessed around him in Babylon. This was indeed the direct cause of the fall of that magnificent city, for its fortification was so strong and its garrison so numerous that Cyrus, with his combined army of Medes and Persians,

failed to take it after a siege of several months. He was about to abandon the seige when a novel idea occurred to him. He knew that a great festival was held annually at which Babylon gave itself up to revelry and drinking. This date he selected for an attack by marching along the channel of the Euphrates, which intersected the city. A trench was dug by which the water of the river was diverted and its depth greatly reduced. The festival extended over some weeks, but on the principal day Belshazzar gave the grand supper in the hall of his palace so vividly pictured by Daniel.

...

'Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem. . . . Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, drank in them.' The revelry was at its height when the dread handwriting appeared on the wall. Meanwhile Cyrus had formed up his attack. His leading companies were already wading along the bed of the Euphrates, the Babylonian pickets had left their post to join in the festivities, and the invaders got possession of the city without resistance from its drunken garrison.

Seventy years later we come to the time of that charming and clever woman, Esther. Her husband, King Ahasuerus, no other than our school friend Xerxes, seems to have been very fond of his dinner and especially of his wine, a pardonable weakness which Esther knew how to humor. He was one of those individuals who become cross and unreasonable when they take a

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glass too much a peculiarity which his wife had noted and knew how to turn to account. Indeed it was a little misunderstanding with his first wife one day after dinner that gave Esther her first opportunity. The way she manages her bear of a husband is admirable, getting all her own way while seeming to let him have all his. In playing her game against Haman, she skillfully avoids bringing on the climax until toward the end of the second little dinner she had arranged for the King and his Prime Minister. ‘And the King arose in his wrath from the banquet of wine and went into the palace garden.' Then Haman knew he was a lost man. There is no finer tale of woman's tact and courage than the Book of Esther.

The details of daily life in Jerusalem in the time of our Lord have been elucidated by the researches of Dr. Edersheim. While the cost of ordinary living was low, there were to be had in the shops and markets many expensive luxuries, including ice from Lebanon. At feasts there was an introductory course of salted meat, or some light dish. Then followed the meal itself, which ended with dessert consisting of olives, radishes, and fruits - even preserved ginger from India is mentioned. The wine was always mixed with water, the necessity for which can well be understood, the natural and unfortified wine grown in those regions at the present time being strong and heady. Indeed it was considered by some that grace should not be said until after water had been added to the wine. Among the growths of repute was the wine of Saron, and there were foreign wines from Ammon and Asia Minor, the latter a sort of boiled must like our paxarette. According to some scholars liqueurs were known and used, but these would only be sweetened and spiced wines such as wine of myrrh and wine in which capers had been soaked.