In the strange 1913 work, the Ancient Chinese Account of the Grand Canyon, or Course of the Colorado, Alexander McAllan argues that the Classic of Mountains and Seas contains descriptions of the North American continent and the Grand Canyon. This ‘account’ is purported to be from a much earlier time than the composition of the text – to around 2250 BC.
According to McAllan, the ‘Ancient Mexicans’ called North America a ‘Mulberry Tree’, and Chinese ‘sages’ spoke of North America as the distant land or tree of ‘Fu-Sang’, meaning ‘Helpful Mulberry’.
In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, this ‘Mulberry’ tree or land is said to be found ten thousand miles away from China across ‘the eastern sea’. It says that this tree or land is three thousand miles wide and has a ‘trunk’ about a hundred miles thick.
There is indeed a point near Yucatan that is around 120 miles in width. Beijing to the Grand Canyon as the crow flies is also a distance of around 10,200 miles. North America, coast to coast, is roughly three thousand miles wide. Weird, eh?
In discussing the text’s description of the Grand Canyon, McAllan relates that:
‘[A]ccording to the translation, a "Great Canyon" is to be seen in the "Great Eastern Waste" "Beyond the Eastern Sea".’
This canyon is said to feature numerous ‘ledges’ and to flow into a ‘charming gulf’. The Grand Canyon does indeed have many falls, cataracts, and rapids, which could be described as ledges, and the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California.
While the image of a Mulberry tree when thinking about the shape of the continent rings eerily true, this could, of course, be pure coincidence. Furthermore, the ‘trunk’, though out by only 20 miles, is only true if referring to the continent as far as Mexico, where the slimmest point is roughly from Tehuantepec to Coatzacoalcos. This ‘trunk’ notion does fit if you ignore Panama (where the narrowest point is nearer to fifty miles across).