4 DR. DANIEL WILSON. 
this geological formation has been questioned. The occurrence of seemingly intrusive flint 
implements of modern Indian workmanship, there, as elsewhere in ancient gravels, has 
tended still further to suggest a wise caution against accepting as indisputable the evidence 
which would thus point to the presence of man on this continent in palæolithie times. 
Yet there is no ground for assuming it as impossible ; nor even as necessarily improbable. 
So striking, indeed, in some respects, are the analogies between the ingenious arts of the 
ancient draftsmen and sculptors of Europe’s palæolithic period, and those of our own 
hyperborean hunter race, that Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his “ Early Man of Britain,”— 
somewhat hastily carrying analogies to an extreme,—arrived at the conclusion that the race 
of the cave men of central Europe’s Reindeer and Musk-sheep period finds its living 
representatives in the Eskimo of our own Arctic Canada. To the geologists who realize 
all that is implied in the slow retreat of this palæolithic race over submerging continents, 
and through changing eras of glacial and sub-glacial range, to such a home within our own 
Arctic Cirele, the oldest historical dates of this new world must seem indeed but of yester- 

day. The assumption, however, was a hasty one, based on a correspondence in arts easily 
accountable in races in many respects dissimilar, but placed, under all the narrow limita- 
tions of the hunter stage in an arctic or semi-arctic climate. In reality the crania of the 
Perigord draftsmen and carvers present no ethnical correspondence to those of the Eskimos ; 
while in point of artistic ability their carvings and etchings exhibit a degree of skill and 
manual dexterity altogether surpassing the highest achievements of Eskimo art. And 
yet in imitative design and artistic skill the aborigines of this continent present striking 
elements of contrast to many of the races of the old world in corresponding stages of devel- 
opment. The Eskimos carve their bone and ivory into ingenious representations of the 
fauna of their inhospitable clime; and draw in well-etched outline, on the handles of 
their weapons and implements of the chase, spirited representations of the incidents of 
their hunter life; while the rude tribes of our great North-West, and those of the Pacific 
Coast and islands of British Columbia, not only copy the familiar animal and vegetable 
forms surrounding them; but represent with no less ingenious verisimilitude novel 
objects of European art brought under their notice. This imitative faculty shows 
itself in many ways: as in plaited and woven grass and quill-work, decorated with pic- 
torial devices wrought as patterns, with coloured grasses and dyed porcupine quills, in the 
process of plating or weaving. Again it is seen in pottery ornamented with floral patterns, 
or modelled into human and animal forms. Not less curious are the arts and architecture of 
the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with their elaborately carved monumental posts, 
and the decorative ornamentation of their village lodges. The analogies which their art 
presents to some of the most characteristic sculptures of the ruined cities of Yucatan, as 
already noted, are replete with interest; marking for us traces of a long-extinct civilization ; 
and surviving, like half obliterated foot-prints, in confirmation of other indications, derived 
from eustoms and language, of ancient routes of migration ; and of early intercourse, if not 
of a common relationship, between savage tribes of our Canadian North-West and Pacific 
coasts and the ancient civilized nations of Central America and the Mexican plateau. 
It is sad, surely, to realize the fact that the glimpse we thus catch of those artistic 
Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with all their peculiar aptitude in carving and 
constructive skill, is that of a vanishing race. Yet it cannot be said of the Haida, that “he 
dies and gives no sign.” On the contrary his ingenious arts embody far-reaching glimpses 
