1885. J NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 51 



up by the ancient miners were of great size, and, like the earth- 

 works of the Mississippi Valley, were covered with " primeval " 

 forests when they were discovered by our people. The ancient 

 inhal)itants had oil wells in Canada, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

 They also worked the mica mines of the southern Alleghanies 

 and at least one lead mine — that of Lexington, Kentucky ; but 

 these mines, like the mounds when discovered, had been aban- 

 doned for hundreds of years and were overgrown l^y forests, in 

 which were trees that had obtained their maximum size.. 



All these facts seem to me to show that the so-called Mound 

 Builders were people very different from the red Indian, and 

 were far more advanced in the arts than even the most intelli- 

 gent of the native tribes occupying the Valley of the Mis- 

 sissippi when the whites tirst entered it. 



THE PALACE BUILDERS. 



So much has been written of the monuments of ancient 

 civilization found in Peru, Central America and Mexico, that 

 any detailed description of them would l)e quite superfluous here. 



Suffice it to say, that from the frontiers of Chili to Salt Lake, 

 in Utali, an almost uninterrupted succession of ruins may be 

 said to exist. These consist of abandoned towns, fortresses, 

 palaces, temples, pyramids and other monuments which are 

 built of stone, and though differing much in detail, have a cer- 

 tain general reseml )lance throughout ; so that we may fairly 

 conclude that they are the relics of different tribes or national- 

 ities which were of common stock, or, at least, derived their 

 civilization from a common source. 



Of the people who constructed these monuments we are not 

 left in ignorance so complete as that which overshadows the 

 work of the Mound Builders, since in Peru, Central America 

 and Mexico the Spaniards found the descendants of those 

 who had constructed the monuments in the practice of their 

 arts, and in the observance of their customs in politics and 

 religion. Also in our own country are a few scattered towns, 

 inhabited by the descendants of the population which once so 

 completely covered the country they inhabit, where wc can see 

 to-day, at least a provincial phase of the civilization which 

 once extended over all the western side of North and South 

 America, within the limits mentioned above. But at the time 

 of the Spanish conquest, the civilization of the ancient in- 



