ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS OF AMERICA. 195 



at least a thousand years had elapsed since the country was 

 abandoned by its former inhabitants, and their fields and villages 

 were overgrown by the forest. Beyond this point all dates are 

 left to conjecture. 



One interesting feature in the Western mounds is that many 

 of them, especially in the prairie regions of the Northwest, are 

 made to imitate, on a gigantic scale, the forms of men, quadru- 

 peds, and birds, and among the animals thus represented is what 

 seems to be the elephant or mastodon. Small figures of an ele- 

 phantine animal also appear in the archaeological collections of 

 the Northwest, and are claimed to be authentic. These relics go 

 far to prove the acquaintance of the mound-builders with either 

 the mastodon or mammoth, and may be accepted as presumptive 

 evidence of the synchronism of man here, as in Europe, with 

 one or both of these great pachyderms and hence of his great 

 antiquity. 



The Palace-builders. The remains of an ancient civiliza- 

 tion, scattered over the west coast of South America, the Isthmus, 

 and Mexico, are so varied and interesting that they form a theme 

 to which nothing like justice can be done in the few minutes at 

 my disposal. Detailed descriptions of these great monuments 

 are, however, the less necessary, since many volumes have been 

 devoted to their exposition. Those who have access to Squier's 

 Peru, Stephens's and Catherwood's, Norman's and Waldeck's 

 books on Central America, or Lord Kingsborough's great work 

 on Mexican Antiquities, will find there, and in the documents cited 

 by their authors, a literature scarcely less rich and interesting 

 than that formed by the records of the Egyptians or Assyrians. 



Of this vast field I can give you but the merest sketch, but, as 

 part of it lies within our own territory, and as in its exploration 

 I have taken part, I can perhaps add some facts additional to 

 those you have learned, and such as will compensate for the time 

 they may occupy. To summarize, as briefly as possible, the 

 knowledge we have of this subject, I may say that from the 

 frontier of Chili to Salt Lake, there exists an almost uninter- 

 rupted series of monuments of a civilization which, though locally 

 peculiar, was generically the same, and unquestionably the prod- 

 uct of divergent streams flowing from a single source. The 

 typical and characteristic remains of this civilization consist of 

 great works of masonry and engineering (fortifications, temples, 

 palaces, communal houses), which in their magnitude and per- 

 fection of workmanship rival the masterpieces of ancient archi- 

 tecture. Bridges, aqueducts, and thousands of miles of paved 

 and graded roads attest the engineering skill of the people by 

 whom they were constructed. 



Honduras, Yucatan, and Colombia would seem to have been the 



