Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking.

Goodbye, Columbus! Standing in a hall lined with flaking editions of Chaucer and Hobbes, Menzies gave his talk. ''Massive evidence, simply overwhelming,'' he said, prancing amid the massive overwhelmingness of it all. He reprised his stories of junks and jades. He talked of peculiar ''bowel afflictions among the Indians once thought to be unique to the Chinese.'' Then there is the matter of the Chinese chickens in South America. Menzies cited his own experience for knowing well ''how the morning call of the Asiatic hen's 'kik-kiri-kee' was markedly different from the 'cock-a-doodle-doo' of their European counterparts.'' Menzies suggested that somewhere in South America, the crew of the Treasure Fleet dropped off some of Admiral Zheng's chickens -- scoring another historical milestone with the first delivery of Chinese takeout.