Author Description

Book Description: "One of the perennial pre-Columbian contact theories involves ancient visits by the Chinese to America. This is made plausible for several reasons. First of all, the voyage around the great circle route across the Pacific is facilitated by almost constant visibility of land and prevailing sea-currents. China had advanced maritime technology long before the European age of discovery, and historically were known to have taken long sea voyages to distant ports such as Africa, Arabia and India before Vasco de Gamma set sail. And lastly, there are suggestive Chinese accounts of lands far to the East in their chronicles. This book, written in the 19th century by Charles Leland, examines these records, and also reviews some of the evidence for such contacts. This has remained a popular hypothesis to the current day. For instance, 1421:The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies, and Voyages of the Pyramid Builders, by Jeremy P. Tarcher, are two recent books which propose pre-Columbian voyages from China to the New World. However, Leland's Fusang explored this concept over a century ago, and is required reading if you have any interest in this topic." (Quote from sacred-texts.com) Table of Contents: Publisher's Preface; Preface; Memoir Of Professor Carl Friedrich Neumann; Knowledge Of Foreign Countries Among The Chinese; Identity Of The Tartars And North American Indians; Or, The Road To America, And The People In It; Tahan Or Aliaska, And Its Discovery; Remarks On The Report Of Hoei-shin; Chinese And Japanese In Kamtschatka And The Hawaiian Group; Fusang And Peru; Navigation Of The North Pacific; Remarks On Colonel Kennon's Letter; Travels Of Other Buddhist Priests (from The Fourth To The Eighth Century); Affinities Of American And Asiatic Languages; The Mound-builders And Mexicans; Images Of Buddha; Deguignes, Klaproth, And D'eichthal; T. Simson And Dr E. Bretschneider; Or Europeans Residing In China On Fusang