Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

11."America was evidently peopled from the old continent, because there were only eight persons saved at the Deluge; the principal part of their posterity, during the whole of the first century after that event, occupied the very center of Asia. Some say that America was peopled by the Carthagenians who possessed the Cape Verd Islands, which are only three weeks sail from that continent. Their ships, having women and children on board, might miss the intended Islands, before the invention of the compass; ^[28] and if so, they would inevitably be driven by the Trade Winds to the coast of America. Others, judging from the similarity of some religious rites, have conjectured that it was peopled by the Ten Tribes at the dispersion of Israel. Some think it received its population from China or Japan; others that it was colonized by some wandering tribes of Japheth, who penetrated into the trackless regions of North America by the straits of Asian. Some have been bold enough to assert that America was not inundated at the Deluge, and that, consequently, the aborigines were Antediluvians, and the most ancient people on earth, (which last assertion is correct). Others suppose that there were few individuals preserved on this vast continent at the Deluge, that it might be without difficulty repeopled. And we are told, " That America was peopled after the Deluge, at the same time as it were (communibus aliis), with other parts of the earth equidistant from the spot whereon the Ark is acknowledged to have grounded. For the grand division of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres through the natural effect of causes operating from the Deluge, did not take place till about half a century after that event; and thus a subject that has uniformly puzzled the most learned historians and philosophers, and given ground for the most elaborate dissertations, namely, the manner by which America was peopled, appears to be made simple and easy, as are all those questions that are submitted to the ordeal of truth, the infallable attestations of Holy Writ. Robertson supposes the Americans to have derived their original from the Asiatics; and supports ^[29] his conjecture by some ancient traditions amongst the Mexicans, which ascribe their primitive population to a horde from a remote country to the northwest; whose gradual progress from the northern coast, where they landed, to the interior provinces, is distinctly traced. And, in the infancy of Christianity, Mexico is said to have been in a more advanced state of civilization than Denmark, Sweden, and Russia.

12.From what people soever Americans descended, or in whatever manner that vast continent was originally furnished with human beings; it is certain that the first inhabitants brought with them a system of Mysteries which they applied to the purposes of Religious Worship, and though this system, in process of time, was almost entirely lost amongst the scattered tribes which led an erratic life in its deepest wilds, yet many of the Truths on which it was founded, were preserved in a deteriorated form, by the two great nations which had planted themselves on each side of the Isthmus of Panama."*

13."The people who erected the obelisks in Egypt and covered them with hieroglyphics, who wrapped mummies, embalming them with the greatest care, knew no more about the pyramid builders than we do to-day. These majestic, voiceless sentinels — the pyramids—with heads uncovered and lifted heavenward, stood there on the broad plain silent and dumb, with no one to explain their origin, when Egyptian civilization began.**

^[30] 14. Of this there can be no doubt. The Pyramids were built by Atlantians long centuries before Egypt was a civilized country. Why then were they built in Egypt instead of on some part of what is now America? Because Egypt was then the center of the earth and the Atlantians with their vast knowledge sought the center, for that will stand as long as time.