TROPICAL NATURE 



prominence. Other examples have the nose somewhat pro- 

 jecting at the apex in a manner quite unlike the features of 

 any American indigenes ; and although there are some which 

 show a much coarser face, it is very difficult to see in any of 

 them that close resemblance to the Indian type which these 

 sculptures have been said to exhibit. The few authentic 

 crania from the mounds present corresponding features, being 

 far more symmetrical and better developed in the frontal 

 region than those of any American tribes, although somewhat 

 resembling them in the occipital outline; 1 while one was 

 described by its discoverer (Mr. W. Marshall Anderson) as a 

 " beautiful skull, worthy of a Greek." 



The antiquity of this remarkable race may perhaps not 

 be very great as compared with the prehistoric man of Europe, 

 although the opinion of some writers on the subject seems 

 affected by that " parsimony of time " on which the late Sir 

 Charles Lyell so often dilated. The mounds are all over- 

 grown with dense forest, and one of the large trees was 

 estimated to be 800 years old, while other observers consider 

 the forest growth to indicate an age of at least 1000 years. 

 But it is well known that it requires several generations of 

 trees to pass away before the growth on a deserted clearing 

 comes to correspond with that of the surrounding virgin 

 forest, while this forest, once established, may go on growing 

 for an unknown number of thousands of years. The 800 or 

 1000 years estimate from the growth of existing vegetation 

 is a minimum which has no bearing whatever on the actual 

 age of these mounds ; and we might almost as well attempt 

 to determine the time of the glacial epoch from the age of 

 the pines or oaks which now grow on the moraines. 



The important thing for us, however, is that when North 

 America was first settled by Europeans, the Indian tribes 

 inhabiting it had no knowledge or tradition of any preceding 

 race of higher civilisation than themselves. Yet we find that 

 such a race existed that they must have been populous and 

 have lived under some established government ; while there 

 are signs that they practised agriculture largely, as, indeed, 

 they must have done to have supported a population capable 

 of executing such gigantic works in such vast profusion ; for 

 1 Wilson's Prehistoric Man, 3d ed., vol. ii. pp. 123-130. 



