Bk. II, Ch. I. INTRODUCTORY. 567 Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea; or, what is more to our purpose, we have only to read the travels of Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang to see Avhat dangers by land and sea the Chinese missionaries between the 4th and 7th centuries were prepared to brave in the service of the faith. It probably would have been easier to travel to Mexico from China via Behring's Straits than to reach India through Central Asia, and to return from Ceylon by sea. Whether or not such a journey was ever accomplished is another question. I do not think that either Neumann ^ or D'Eichthal^ have at all made out a satisfac- tory case to prove that the country of Fusang, from which the pil- grim Hoei Shin returned to China, in the year 499, was Mexico. On the contrary, the evidence of the domestic animals, etc., he speaks of, and other important details, all seem to tell the other way. It looks more as if Vancouver Island, or the coast thereabout, was the place indicated. But are there any remains of a half-civilized people there? Be this as it may, the story, which is authentic as far as it goes, seems to prove that Northern America was in communication with Northern Asia in the 5th century. D'Eichthars argument, that the Mexican sculptures are Buddhist, seems even more groundless. I have carefully examined the exam- ples he adduces, and, from a tolerably intimate acquaintance with Buddhist art in Asia, may be permitted to say that I can see no trace of it in Mexico. If the argument were based on that serpent- worship which almost everywhere underlies Buddhism in the Old World, it would not be so easy to refute it. There is a very consid- erable likeness betAveen the sculptured forms of the serpent-worship in the Old and in the New World. But it is a serious question, whether this arose from a similar instinct in the two races, or was communicated from the one to the other. My present impression is in favor of some intercommunication in so far as serpent-worship is concerned. Our knowledge of the architecture of Eastern Asia and of Western America is not yet sufficiently precise to enable us to base any very pointed argument upon it. It is curious, however, that as we advance eastward from the valley of the Euphrates at every step we meet with forms of art becoming more and more like those of Central America. When we reach the sea we encounter at Suku in Java a teocalli, which is almost identical with that of Tehuantepec.^ In Cam- bodia we have teocallis at Bakong and Bakeng, and no one would be startled if told that representations of some of the temples at Ongcor Thom in Cambodia were reallv taken from buildings found 1 Ausland, 1845, Nos. 165, 168. 2 D'Eichthal," Revue Archpeologiqne,"vol. x. 1864, p. 188, and following numbers. ^ Sir Stamford Raffles' " History of Java," vol. ii. p. 51.
