INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 5 
of a remote past, the full significance of which has yet to be determined. They help us 
moreover, in the interpretation of other records of a like kind, such as those of the long- 
vanished Mound Builders, by whom the fertile valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi 
were occupied in America’s prehistoric times. ~ With the aid of their carvings and pottery 
we learn much regarding their physical aspect, the range of their geographical experience, 
their intercourse with remote regions, and probably with diverse tribes, extending from 
the rich copper regions of Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. We have material also for 
gauging their mental capacity and intellectual development; though this is a problem 
requiring wise caution in the attempt to solve it, whether the reference be to the ingenious 
ivory-carvers and draftsmen of Europe’s palæolithic dawn, or to the potters and pipe- 
sculptors among the races of this continent. The arts of the savage Haidas show how 
great may be the artistic development within certain narrow limits, perpetuating mimetic 
skill and an inherited conventional art, through many generations ; and yet accompanied 
by no corresponding traces of civilization in other directions. On the other hand, the mar- 
vellous geometrical earth-works which haye been justly accepted as the true characteristics 
of the vanished race of the Ohio valley perpetuate for us the perplexing evidence of a sin- 
gular geometrical skill among a people with whom the metallurgic arts were in the simplest 
elementary stage. 
By those, and the like means, we recover glimpses of an ancient past for our new world, 
as for the old. Prehistoric they are for us, though how old we cannot as yet pretend to guess ; 
for, after all, antiquity is a very relative thing. The landing of Julius Cesar is among the 
oldest of definite events for the British historian. For Rome it was an achievement of 
very late date; and as for Greece, Carthage, Pheenicia, or Egypt, their histories had 
already come to an end long before that of England had its beginning. For our Western 
World, even now anything dating before the landing of Columbus seems remote as 
era of Menes to the Egyptologist ; and yet for England that is the time of her Tudors, 
and already modern. But Greenland has disclosed in our own day graven runic 
memorials which place beyond all question a far older knowledge of America revealed 
to European explorers. During a recent visit to Copenhagen, I examined with peculiar 
interest, the runic monuments recovered from Igallico, Ikigeit, Kingiktorsoak, and other 
settlements of the old Northmen of Greenland: memorials of Eric the Red, the founder 
of the first colony of Northmen beyond the Atlantic, about the year 1,000 ; and of Lief. his 
son, who, according to the old Eric saga, sailed southward in quest of other lands; and for 
whose traces the antiquaries of Rhode Island and other New England States have searched 
with becoming enthusiasm. The Dighton Rock is familiar now to all American anti- 
quaries ; for no Behistun cuneiforms, or triliteral Rosetta Stone, ever received more faithful 
study. The more substantial Round Tower of Newport, Rhode Island, long furnished another 
well-accredited memorial of the exploration of New England by the Northmen of the 
eleventh century. Professor Rafn and his brother antiquaries of Copenhagen welcomed 
the dubious relics with undoubting faith; and the authentication of them in the 
Antiquitates Americane gave them for a time a well-accredited guarantee of genuineness. But 
the runes of the Dighton Rock have vanished, with the faith of their too credulous inter- 
preters; and as for the Newport Round Tower,—one of the few genuine historical ruins of 
the New World, north of Mexico,—its chief associations are now with the venerable poet, so 
recently passed away from us in the ripe maturity of years and fame, who linked its 
