Charles Godfrey Leland

Fusang Or, the Discovery of America: by Chinese Buddhist Priests in the Fifth Century Charles Godfrey Leland

Was the west coast of North America visited by travelers from China in the depths of antiquity? Ancient Asian documents provide extraordinary evidence that they did. For this intriguing 1875 book, folklorist Leland collected various interpretations and analyses of the writings of Chinese Buddhist missionary Hoei-Shin, who describes a voyage to the land of "Fusang" a millennium before Columbus that appears to describe the terrain, the cultures, and the peoples of the Pacific Northwest. A number of arguments by several experts build the case for this early "discovery" of America in a work that will fascinate students of global history. American journalist CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903) was editor of Continental Monthly during the Civil War and coined the term emancipation as an alternative to abolition, but he is best remembered for his books on ethnography, folklore, and language, including The Gypsies (1882), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892), and Aradia: Gospels of the Witches (1899).