GEOGRAPHY, ANTIQUITIES, AND STATISTICS. 309 



vancement as was necessary to the attainment of the skill indis- 

 pensable to the. production of a reliable and enduring record of 

 human events, however rude and imperfect, have been few in 

 number, and confined to such as I have endeavored briefly to 

 enumerate. Over the greater part of the earth's surface, auspi- 

 cious locality and genius of race were not so combined as to have 

 enabled mankind to reach that point. The red man of America, 

 the shepherds of Tartary, the black races of Africa, never even 

 approached it. The most highly endowed and the most happily 

 situated of the nations of Europe had reached it only in compara- 

 tively modern times, and might not, indeed, have reached it at all 

 had they not borrowed largely from their more precocious neigh- 

 bors of Asia. The physical geography of the wild regions of 

 Tartary, independent of the quality of the race, has ever made it 

 impossible that man should have advanced beyond the condition 

 of migrating shepherds, who have now and then united in for- 

 midable hosts, and proved the scourges of civilized man. The 

 peculiar privations, both as to locality and race, which character- 

 ize some regions of the earth have made all advance in arts beyond 

 what was indispensable to a bare preservation of existence im- 

 possible, and of this we have examples in the land of the Esqui- 

 maux and of the Australians. In a few localities even this 

 amount of skill had not been attained. Thus, Spitzbergen, Nova 

 Zembla, and even Iceland, when first seen by civilized man, were 

 uninhabited ; and when we see the Esquimaux living and multi- 

 plying and spreading in equally rigorous or even more rigorous 

 climates, it is hard to believe but that they must once have had an 

 aboriginal population, seeing that at least animal food is abun- 

 dant in them. If they had they must have perished for want of 

 skill to maintain existence. New Zealand would seem to have 

 had no native inhabitants until it came to be colonized by savages 

 and cannibals from the tropical islands of the Pacific. It is diffi- 

 cult in this case, too, to believe that prolific nature should have left 

 so large a country without aboriginal inhabitants, yet it is more 

 probable that the aborigines were either extirpated or absorbed by 

 the more powerful invaders, than that they perished from want of 

 skill in the arts." 



At a recent meeting of the " Boston Society of Natural Histor}^ 1 ' 

 Prof. Agassiz offered some remarks upon the antiquity of man. 

 He said that 50 years ago both the learned and unlearned believed 

 they possessed a trustworthy chronology of human history. His- 

 torians struck the first blow at this assumption by their researches 

 into the successive dynasties. which had ruled over Egypt. Their 

 lead was quietly followed in the different departments of science, 

 until now we are forced to cast aside the ancient beliefs and con- 

 struct our chronology from a new and independent basis. Twelve 

 years ago, Ferdinand Keller, of Zurich, by his examination of the 

 lake deposits of Switzerland, brought to light proofs of the exist- 

 ence of races of men with new characters of civilization. These 

 discoveries astonished the world, and have since given rise to a new 

 science, new societies, and new museums. Humanity is now con- 

 nected with geological phenomena. 



