Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II · PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

Yes: something of the sort appears to have been done about ten years after the Zeno narrative was published. In October, 1568, that great sailor, Sir John Hawkins, by reason of scarcity of food, The case of David Ingram, 1568. was compelled to set about a hundred men ashore near the Rio de Minas, on the Mexican coast, and leave them to their fate. The continent was a network of rude paths or trails, as it had doubtless been for ages, and as central Africa is to-day. Most of these Englishmen probably perished in the wilderness. Some who took southwestern trails found their way to the city of Mexico, where, as "vile Lutheran dogges," they were treated with anything but kindness. Others took northeasterly trails, and one of these men, David Ingram, made his way from Texas to Maine, and beyond to the St. John's river, where he was picked up by a friendly French ship and carried to France, and so got home to England. The journey across North America took him about eleven months, but one of his comrades, Job Hortop, had no end of adventures, and was more than twenty years in getting back to England. Ingram told such blessed yarns about houses of crystal and silver, and other wonderful things, that many disbelieved his whole story, but he was subjected to a searching examination before Sir Francis Walsingham, and as to the main fact of his journey through the wilderness there seems to be no doubt.[304]