4 FOSSIL MEN. 



systematic views of the culture of the American na- 

 tions should be placed beside the results of European 

 research, and that such comparisons shall not be over- 

 loaded with details, but shall be given in a distinct 

 and pictorial form. It has occurred to me that this 

 may best be done by taking up our position on the 

 antiquities of one tribe or locality, connecting the 

 others with this, so as to show the homogeneous nature 

 of the American culture, and then applying the whole 

 to European facts and difficulties. 



I shall therefore take as my first starting-point the 

 primitive town of Hochelaga, the predecessor of the 

 fair city of Montreal, and shall present to the reader 

 American and European prehistoric times as they 

 would appear to an inhabitant of that ancient town. 

 We shall thus at least obtain a novel insight, remote 

 from that of the ordinary geologist or archaeologist, 

 and which may aid us in interpreting some things 

 which from his point of view are most difficult to 

 understand. We shall, I hope, find that such change 

 of base in our attack on prehistoric times may afford 

 advantages of a peculiar character, and may enable 

 us to correct some of the fanciful and enthusiastic 

 impressions of those who look back on prehistoric 

 times in Europe from the, perhaps, too elevated 

 standpoint of a mature civilization, to which the rude 

 hunter, with his weapons of stone and bone, seems a 

 creature almost too remote to have approached within 

 thousands of years, and rather to be pushed back 

 into the mists of an archaic and forgotten anti- 



