74 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



years, during which human life might have been comfort- 

 able at this place. There is no respectable doubt nowa- 

 days that the aborigines of Cohasset were descended from 

 the Indians, who dwelt south of the front edge of the 

 glacier when it lay freezing and melting for many years 

 upon these northern lands. Indeed, there is very con- 

 vincing evidence in the famous Trenton gravels that 

 human life prevailed in these northern %\.2l\.q.?, preceding the 

 formatio7i of the ice sheet. The stone implements which 

 have been found in those New Jersey gravel banks, that 

 make the terminal moraine of the glacier, have been found 

 lying in such positions as proves to almost any doubter 

 that the glacier pushed them there from farther north, 

 along with the gravel. One may see this great col- 

 lection of thousands of implements in the Harvard Mu- 

 seum where C. C. Abbott has deposited them ; but the 

 evidence of their antiquity may be read in the careful 

 discussions of Professor Wright's book, which we have 

 already quoted. The further corroborative evidence 

 which has come from the moraines of Minnesota, and 

 from California, and from the clay image of Idaho dis- 

 covered three hundred and twenty feet below the surface, 

 beneath basalt rock, all of these, and many more discov- 

 eries scientifically authentic, have been forcing the archae- 

 ologists of America to a belief in the preglacial existence 

 of man upon this continent. But since no evidence of 

 this life has yet been discovered at Cohasset, brought 

 here in the glacial drift from farther north, our only con- 

 cern is with the life which has come later than the glacier. 

 Doubtless the first Indian explorers from the southern 

 lands came to Cohasset upon fishing and hunting expedi- 

 tions, while the glacier was dying ; but when the climate 

 became warmer, and the vegetation spread itself for homes 

 of wild animals and birds, then such Indians as found life 

 more agreeable here came to this rocky shore to live. 

 Their habits and customs and language, as well as their 



