120 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
Pyramids of remote antiquity are found in India, China and Tahiti, as well 
as in Egypt and South America. Those of Egypt are in the best state of 
preservation and perhaps therefore the most recent. 
The learned Bavarian, Dr. Von Martius, regards the evidence incontroverti- 
ble ‘‘of the existence of the aborigines of America long anterior to the period 
assigned in Hebrew chronology for the creation of the world;’’ a race whose 
utter dissolution manifests that it either bore within itself the germ of ex- 
tinction or attempted an existence under most fatally unfavorable conditions. 
Dr. Clarke says: ‘‘ No race of human kind has yet obtained a permanent 
foothold upon the American continent. The Asiatics trace back their life in 
Asia so far, that the distance between to-day and their recorded starting-point 
seems like a geologic epoch. ‘The descendants of the Ptolemies still cultivate 
the banks of the Nile. The race that peopled Northern Europe when Greece 
and Rome were young, not only retains its ancient place and power, but 
makes itself felt and heard throughout the world. On the American conti- 
nent, races have been born, developed, and disappeared. The causes of their 
disappearance are undiscovered. We only know that they are gone.’’ It re- 
mains to be seen if the Anglo-Saxon race, which has ventured upon a conti- 
nent which has proved the tomb of antecedent races, can produce a physique 
capable of meeting successfully, and advancing under, the demands that our 
climate and type of civilization make uponit. This is an interesting query. 
If we have been utterly confounded in contemplating the stupendous monu- 
ments of Egyptian magnificence, which continue to defy the ravages of time, 
what shall be said of remains of more ancient pyramids and colossal figures 
in America, of a style and character analogous to those of ancient Egypt, 
whose very stones are crumbling to decay, and on whose flinty sides verdure 
has crept over the dust of ages, until ancient and gigantic forests have ac- 
quired root-hold, and grown over their very summits? Many an Alexander 
and Napoleon of pre-historic times has gone to his rest, and left no record, 
capable of enduring to the age we live in, to mark the glory of his empire. 
Many mummies are found in Peru, enveloped in bandages of fine cloth, 
while the bodies of kings are admirably preserved by means of a secret known 
only to the royal family. 
In the far distance of remote antiquity, successive peoples have risen to 
importance and passed away, long ages before the birth of those from whom 
the faintest ray of civilization has remained to cast even a feeble reflection of 
its pale light upon the fading pages of our most ancient historic records. 
A period has undoubtedly existed, in the primitive history of our earth, 
when the necessary equilibrium between its external and internal forces has 
been lost. When the external pressure on the crust became diminished by 
the sublimation and recomposition of external elements, which, when refined 
and advanced, were unequal in density to the expansive force of igneous ma- 
terials confined in the interior mass. The solid enveloping crust of our 
spheve is the medium constantly acted upon, by these contending forces, in 
seeking a state of equilibrium. Geologists direct us to many prominences 
in which the upheaved strata, on one side, is abruptly broken, and on the 
other, gently inclined. Such ruptures could not have been gradual, for in 
places the whole combined strata is fractured, depressing portions, and rais- 
