PRE-ARYAN AMERICAN MAN. 59 
other implements of bone, pottery, pipes both in stone and clay, and personal ornaments, 
receive the like detailed illustration ; but nearly all are in the rudest stage of rudimentary 
art. Some advance upon this is seen in the pottery of some Southern States. That of the 
Mound-builders appears to have shown both more artistic design and better finish. The 
carving in bone, ivory, and slate-stone of various Western Tribes, as well as of the extinct 
Mound-builders, was also of a higher character. But taking them at their highest, they cannot 
compare in practical skill or variety of application with the industrial arts of Europe’s Neoli- 
thic Age ; and we look in vain for any traces of higher progress. For upwards of three and 
ahalf centuries, this continent has been familiar to European explorers and settlers. During 
some considerable portion of that time, by means of agricultural operations, and all the 
incidents consequent on urban settlement, its virgin soil has been turned ‘up over ever 
increasing areas. For thirty years I have myself watched, with the curious interest of one 
previously familiar with the minute incidents of archeological research in Britain, the 
urban excavations, railway cuttings, and others undesigned explorations of Canadian soil. 
Within the same period, both in Canada and the United States, extensive canal, railway, 
and road-works have afforded abundant opportunities for research; and a wide-spread 
interest in American antiquities has tended to confer an even exaggerated importance on 
every novel discovery. And with what result? Dr. Abbott, incrowning such explorations 
with his interesting and valuable discovery of the turtle-back celts and other implements 
of the Delaware gravel, has epitomised the prehistoric record of the Northern continent. 
The further back we date the presence of man in America, the more marvellous must 
his unprogressive condition appear. Whatever may be the ampler disclosures relative to 
the palæolithic or primæval race, it does not seem probable that this northern continent 
will now yield any antiquities suggestive of an extinct era of native art and civilization. 
Here we cannot hope to find a buried Ilium, or Tadmor in the Wilderness. Everywhere 
the explorer wanders, and the agriculturist follows, turning up the soil, or digging deeper 
as he drains and builds ; but only to disturb the grave of the savage hunter. The Mound- 
builders of its great river-valleys have indeed left there their enduring earthworks, wrought 
at times in regular geometrical configuration on a gigantic scale, strangely suggestive of 
some overruling and: informing mind guiding the hand of the earth-worker; and 
fashioning his embankments with a skill derived from scientific knowledge. But the 
colossal mounds and earthworks disclose only implements of bone and flint or stone; 
with here and there an equally rude tool of hammered native copper. The crudest metal- 
lurgy of Europe’s copper-age was unknown to their builders. The art of Tubalcain, the 
primitive worker in brass and iron, had not dawned on the mind of any native artificer. 
Only the ingeniously carved tobacco pipe, or the better fashioned pottery, gives the slightest 
hint of even such progress beyond the first infantile stage of the tool-maker as is shown in 
the artistic carvings of the Cave-men contemporary with the mammoth and the reindeer 
of post-glacial France. 
The civilization of Central and Southern America is a wholly distinct thing; and, 
as I think, of Asiatic origin; but the attempts to connect it with that of ancient 
Egypt, suggested mainly by the hieroglyphic sculpturing on their columns and 
temples, find their confutation the moment we attempt to compare the Egyptian 
calendar with that either of Mexico or Peru. The vague year of 365 days, and the 
corrected solar year, with the great Sothic Cycle of 1460 years, so intimately inter- 
