at the surface of the ground. The vegetable world yields in abundance, and almost of its own accord, the necessaries of life in the most varied forms; while the animals, most of which are good for food, are a still more valuable source of wealth. And yet the greater part of this happy land has been occupied, for centuries, by peoples who have not succeeded, to the slightest extent, in exploiting their treasures. Some have started on the road to improvement. In more than one place we come upon an attenuated kind of culture, a rudimentary attempt to extract the minerals. The traveller may still, to his surprise, find a few useful arts being practised with a certain ingenuity. But all these efforts are very humble and uncoordinated; they are certainly not the beginnings of any definite civilization. In the vast territory between Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, the River Missouri and the Rocky Mountains,[1] there certainly existed, in remote ages, a nation which has left remarkable traces of its presence. The remains of buildings, the inscriptions engraved on rocks, the tumuli,[2] the mummies, show that it had reached an advanced state of mental culture. But there is nothing to prove a very close kinship between this mysterious people and the tribes that now
- ↑ Prichard, "Natural History of Man," sec. 37. See also Squier, "Observations on the Aboriginal Monuments of the Mississippi Valley."
- ↑ The special construction of these tumuli and the numerous instruments and utensils they contain are occupying the attention of many eminent American antiquaries. It is impossible to doubt the great age of these monuments. Squier is perfectly right in finding a proof of this in the mere fact that the skeletons discovered in the tumuli fall to pieces when brought into the slightest contact with the air, although the conditions for their preservation are excellent, so far as the quality of the soil is concerned. On the other hand, the bodies which lay buried under the cromlechs of Brittany, and which are at least 1 800 years old, are perfectly firm. Hence we may easily imagine that there is no relation between these ancient inhabitants of the land and the tribes of the present day — the Lenni-Lenapes and others. I must not end this note without praising the industry and resource shown by American scholars in the study of the antiquities of their continent. Finding their labours greatly hindered by the extreme brittleness of the skulls they had exhumed, they discovered, after many abortive attempts, a way of pouring a preparation of bitumen into the bodies, which solidifies at once and keeps the bones from crumbling. This delicate process, which requires infinite care and quickness, seems, as a rule, to be entirely successful.
