The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1877-11-17
Who Discovered America ?

g see, " said the Professor, cooking up his
legs upon the stove in the grocery store, Il see
that they talk of putting up a monument to
Christopher Columbus. It's too bad the way
~people'ye been fooled about him. He never dis
covered America, and I've made up my mind to
bust that old fraud and shake him out and let
the people see what kind of a rotten old swindle
he is"
"You say that Columbus didn't discover
America 2" asked Mr.. Partridge.
Certainly he didn't. He was a mean, lub-
berry sneak, who went padding around in a
scow letting on he was doing big things when he
hadn't pluck enough to get out of sight of land
Who did discover it, then
"Well, I'll tell you fellows in advance of
publication, but mind you lay low about it. 1t
was Potiphar !"
"What was his first name ?"
First name? Why he hadn't any. 1t was
only Potiphar-old Pharaoh's Potiphar you
know"
"How'd you find out about it,"
"Why, you know old Gridley, up in the city A!
Well, last year he was in Egypt, and he brought
home a mummy, all wrapped up in bed-clothes
and soldered around with sealing-wax. Gridley
asked me to come over and help to undress him,
and so we tackled that mummy, and after rolling
off a couple of hundred yards of calico we
reached him. Looked exactly like dried beef.
Black as your hat and just about tender enough
to chip down for tea. Gridley said he'd like to
know who the old rooster was, and I looked him
ObCI = AlQ Ouks 4Ou AuOH nov IUcH puG I'D d
mummy, don't you? Take out all his machi-
merry inside, and fill him up with nutmegs and
cinnamon. Then they set a brass door-plate in
his stomach and make some little memoranda,
with obituary poetry, and all that kind Of thing.
Anyhow, after polishing him up with a flesh
brush for a minute or two, l found the door
plate, and with some care 1 managed to read the
inscriptions on it. 1t was this Il am Potiphar,
servant of Pharaoh. / was buried three thou
sand years before the Christian era. / discovered
America @. Columbus was an impostor. That's
what the inscription said, and in my opinion
that settles it. Now I'll tell you what I'm
going to do. I've had a cast made of that
dried beef, and l intend to have it swelled all
out and made into a statue, and I'm going to
set it up at my own expense alongside the statue
of Columbus, and have a sign put on it to tho
effect that Columbus is a ragged old fraud. Then
l intend to get up a memorial to congress asking
1t to change the name Of the country to Poti-
pharia, and to make Potiphar's sacred animal,
the tom-cat, the mathematical bird of the nation,
instead of the eagle. Be a big thing, won't it,
to compel everybody to sing Hail Potiphar,
happy land! = and 'Potipharia the Gem of the
Ocean?'"
You say you read the inscription on the
plate" said Partridge. 81 didn't know you
understood the language"
Can read it as easy as a, b, c."
Buried three thousand years before the
Christian era, !" l think you said it read. How
did old Pot know anything about the Christian
era if he died that long before ?"
Blamed if l know. Cast his prophetic eye
over the future, l s'pose."
"Well, how in thunder could he tell that
Columbus was going to claim to have discovered
America ?'
That's so. l dunno. Is kind of queer"
"Do you know what I think of you ?" asked
Partridge. 9" think you'd lie the hair off of an
old-fashioned trunk, and that if | was asked to
nominate the champion American fraud to go on
a pedestal at some national exhibition Id send
in your name"
Would you, though really?"
81 would"
We'll, it's surprising, how well you know
me-
The Potiphar memorial has not yet been sent
to congress.