Note I-147 — Chapter I · ON THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICANS.
Reading edition
'The strong Galleys, with sails and oars, and always before the constant East-Wind and onward wave-current, would accomplish ten miles an hour by day, and during the night, without the Rowers, six miles an hour, and, equally dividing the twenty-four hours, would make a run of 192 miles per day. Nautical proofs will show that in the above calculation the power of the Trade-Winds [i. e. the East-Winds] are underrated. The distance from Teneriffe to Florida is about 3300 miles, which by the foregone data they would traverse in seventeen and a quarter days. The Voyage may therefore with safety be said to have been accomplished during an entire month, and that, consequently the first landing of a branch of the human family in Ancient America would be in the last month of Autumn, three hundred and thirty-two years before the Christian Æra.'