160 FOSSIL MEN. 



used as food. Let it be observed, further, that a 

 grain of corn or a bean could not have escaped decay 

 unless it had happened to be accidentally charred, and 

 some accident of this kind, occurring in connection 

 with cookery, alone provided this slight confirmation 

 of the story of the agriculture of Hochelaga. 



Perhaps in no respect is it usually supposed that 

 primitive man is more to be contrasted with modern 

 races in an imperfect state of civilization, than in 

 his knowledge of distant regions and the intercourse 

 which he carries on with them. In this respect, 

 according to Dupont, there is evidence that the 

 Palaeolithic men had more extensive commerce than 

 their successors of the Eeindeer age, and perhaps 

 both of them more than the peasant of medieval 

 or modern times. Just as we find evidence in the 

 French caves, and the older dwellings built on piles 

 over the Swiss lakes, that their inhabitants had com- 

 munication with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, 

 and could procure the sacred and useful jade of the far 

 east, the coral of the Mediterranean, the amber of the 

 Baltic and the improved wheat of Egypt,* so was 

 it in pre-historic America. The Hochelagans who 

 accompanied Cartier to the summit of Mount Eoyal, 

 and the ancients of Stadacona with whom he conversed 

 after his return, concurred in informing him that the 

 great river of Hochelaga, which he called the St. 

 Lawrence, extended many days' journey beyond the 

 point to which he had penetrated, and that it issued 



* Keller, "Report on Swiss Lake Habitations." 



