THE EARTH RECEIVES HER KING. 285 



Mountains, the relics of the ancient proboscidians have often 

 been discovered in such association with human relics as to 

 afford strong evidence of contemporaneity. On the banks of 

 the Ashley River in South Carolina, human bones, arrow- 

 heads, hatchets and potsherds are found mingled with bones 

 of the hog, the horse, the mastodon, and extinct gigantic liz- 

 ards. In the same epoch lived the wide-faced bison, the 

 shrub-loving tapir and a gigantic beaver, and a number of 

 gigantic Edentates wanderers from South America. 



If, from the monuments which these primitive people have 

 left behind, we attempt to form an estimate of their physical, 

 intellectual, and moral characteristics, we become at once 

 convinced that in their cranial characters they were equal in 

 rank to the average races of modern times. Beyond all ques- 

 tion, they were no connecting links between man and lower 

 animals. The evidences of their intelligence place them as 

 high as the Esquimaux. In mechanical skill they were 

 equal to the manufacture of a large assortment of imple- 

 ments of stone and bone. Before the close of the Stone Age, 

 they produced many evidences of an aesthetic faculty. They 

 polished their stone axes, and worked their arrow and lance 

 heads after more elaborate and artistic patterns. Their pot- 

 tery began to receive some crude decorations. They carved 

 the bone and horn handles of some of their weapons. They 

 engraved on slate, ivory, and bone the figures of familiar ani- 

 mals; and among these portraits are sketches of the hairy 

 elephant, furnishing further evidence of their contemporane- 

 ous possession of the forest and the plain. These men also, 

 possessed a religious nature. There are certain emblems and 

 objects which, by general admission, must receive a religious 

 interpretation. The care bestowed on the dead evinces a be- 

 lief that even after death they retained relations of love and 

 recognition. They sent them on their mysterious journey 

 with such offerings and supplies as should meet their neces- 

 sities. The idea of future life dwelt in their breasts ; even 

 these poor fore-runners of our humanity dreamed of a happy 

 world beyond the pains and trials of mortal dissolution. 



