viii THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 439 



change of physical conditions from those now existing, and 

 thus of itself implies great antiquity. 1 



These indications of the great antiquity of American man 

 are now supported by such a mass of evidence of the same 

 character that all the improbability supposed at first to 

 attach to them has been altogether removed. As an illustra- 

 tion of this evidence I need only refer here to the Eeport 

 on the Loess of Nebraska, by an experienced geologist, Dr. 

 Samuel Aughey, who states that this deposit, which is now 

 believed by the best American geologists to be of Glacial 

 origin, and which covers enormous areas, contains throughout 

 its entire extent many remains of mastodons and elephants, 

 and that he himself had found an arrow and a spear-head of 

 flint at depths of fifteen and twenty feet in the deposit. One 

 of these was thirteen feet below a lumbar vertebra of Elephas 

 americanus. 



Man in the Glacial Period 



We now take a decided step backwards in time, to relics 

 of human industry within or at the close of the Glacial period 

 itself. About twenty years ago a well was sunk through the 

 drift at Games, a few miles south of Lake Ontario, and at a 

 depth of seventeen feet there were found lying on the solid 

 rock three large stones enclosing a space within which were 

 about a dozen charred sticks, thus closely resembling the cook- 

 ing fires usually made by savages. Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the 

 U.S. Geological Survey, obtained the information from the 

 intelligent farmer who himself found it, and after a close ex- 

 amination of the locality and the drift deposit in its relation 

 to the adjacent lakes, comes to the conclusion that the hearth 

 must have been used "near the end of the second Glacial 

 period," and at the time of the separation of Lake Ontario 

 from Lake Erie. When Mr. Gilbert gave an account of his 

 researches on this matter at the meeting of the Washington 

 Anthropological Society, 16th November 1886, two other 

 gentlemen reported finds of similar character. Mr. Murdock, 

 of the Point Barrow Station, near the extreme north-west 

 corner of the continent, in making an excavation for an earth 

 thermometer, found an Eskimo snow-goggle beneath more 

 1 Foster's Prehistoric Races of tlie United States, p. 56. 



