267 



FOOTPRINTS OF VANISHED RACES IN CORNWALL. 

 By Rev. D. GATH WHH%KY. 



The paasiiif^ away of a race, forms a subject for the serious 

 consideration, not only of the politician, but also of the scientist 

 and the philanthropist. That a community of individuals united 

 by common physical characteristics, and by similar social and 

 moral customs, should slowly decay and ultimately perish, is an 

 event which cannot be contemplated without sorrow. It is, 

 however, an event of frequent occurrence. We have seen, not 

 long ago, the extinction of the strange race of the Tasmanians, 

 the last member of whom, an old woman, died in 1877.^ The 

 present century will certainly witness the passing away of the 

 Polynesians, for this interesting race has for a long time been 

 diminishing in numbers. It has ever been so ; the world is 

 full of the memorials of departed races. The mound-builders of 

 the eastern part of the basin of the Mississippi, who covered the 

 whole of that region with their earthworks, tumuli, and fortifi- 

 cations f the Cliff-dwellers of Arizona, whose strange stone houses 

 appear in the crags and crevices of the precipices ; ^ and the 

 constructors of the Cyclopean edifices of Polynesia, the stones of 

 which were frequently brought from distant islands,* have all 

 utterly disappeared. So also has it been in Cornwall, for, in 

 prehistoric times, many races dwelt in Western Britain, and then 

 darkly passed away. To rescue their records from obscurity ; to 

 picture their manners, habits and customs ; to assign to them their 

 proj^er place in the history of our western Peninsula, is ilnQ task 

 undertaken by the youthful science of prehistoric archteology. 



1. A most valuable account of the Tasmanians may be read in Hommes Fossiles 

 et Homnies Sauvages, by M. de Quatrefages, pp 292 — 400. 



2. The Marquis de Nadaillac gives a most exhaustive account of the Mound 

 Builders in his fine work entitled Prehistoric America, chaps. Ill, IV. 



3. Ibid. Chap. V. 



4. The best description of these strange ruins that I have read, is that given 

 by Mr. J. H. Lamprey, in the Report of the Congress of Prehistoric Archceology 

 (Norwich) 1868. 



