PALAEOLITHIC MAN IN AMERICA. 147 



ling to most people ; but, as has been time and again conclusively 

 shown, it is no unwarranted fancy. We are apt to consider the 

 mastodon as a creature of so distant a time in the unrecorded 

 past, that man must necessarily have appeared much later upon 

 the scene. The truth is, comparatively speaking, the creature so 

 recently became extinct that, in all probability, our historic In- 

 dians were acquainted with it. Certain it is that, in the distant 

 long ago of the great Ice age, the mastodon existed, and equally 

 certain that with him lived that primitive man who fabricated 

 the rude implements we have described. The bones of the ani- 

 mal and the bones and weapons of the man lie side by side, deep 

 down in the gravels deposited by the floods from the melting ice- 

 sheet. In February, 1885, I walked to and fro over the frozen 

 Delaware, where it reaches a full mile in width, and saw at the 

 time many horses and sleighs passing from shore to shore. I 

 recalled, as I walked, what the geologists have recorded of the 

 river's history, and it was no wild whim of the unchecked imagi- 

 nation to picture the Delaware as a still more firmly frozen 

 stream; so firmly ice-bound, indeed, that the mastodon might 

 pass in safety over it not cautiously, even, but with the quick 

 trot of the angry elephant and picture still further a terror- 

 stricken Stone-age hunter fleeing for his life. 



Just as our brief yearly winter gives way to milder spring, so, 

 as the centuries rolled by, the mighty winter of the Ice age yield- 

 ed to changes that were slowly wrought. Century by century, the 

 sun's power was exerted with more telling effect ; constantly in- 

 creasing areas of northward-lying land were laid bare, and the 

 forest followed the retreating glaciers' steps. This great but 

 gradual change had, of course, its influence upon animal life, and 

 many of the large mammals that have been named appear to have 

 preferred the cooler to the warmer climate and followed the ice- 

 sheet on its northward march. 



In the unnumbered centuries during which these changes came 

 about, man increased in wisdom, if not in stature, and the rude 

 implements that characterize the lowest known form of humanity 

 palaeolithic man of prehistoric archaeology were gradually 

 discarded for smaller and more specialized ones. This change was 

 doubtless the result of faunal changes that required a compound 

 instead of a simple implement, as an effective weapon a small 

 spear-head attached to a shaft, instead of a sharpened stone held 

 in the hand ; and we find now, as characteristic of conditions geo- 

 logically later than the gravel beds, a well-designed spear-point, 

 larger than Indian arrow-heads, of a remarkably uniform pattern, 

 and which might readily be supposed to be the handiwork of the 

 historic Indians. But let us examine into the history of these ob- 

 jects a little closely. In the first place, the conditions under which 



