SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 407 



Trifling as such relics of Indian superstion, or of the rude traffic 

 of harbarous tribes, may appear, they are not without some value to 

 us, both in regard to the light they throw on the ancient history of 

 this continent, and also, perhaps, in respect to some of the forms in 

 which the progressive civilization of its new occupants may be modi- 

 fied by the same physical causes which largely controlled the ancient 

 intercourse between north and south, and between west and east. 



In no respect is the continent, to which these relics pertain, 

 more strikingly diverse from that of Europe, than in its broadly- 

 marked physical characteristics. The greatest diameter of Europe is 

 from east to west, so that its chief area of occupation is embraced 

 within a nearly similar range of temperature. Yet along with this great 

 uniformity of climate, its surface is broken up by mountain ranges, 

 its coasts are indented by bays, estuaries, and land-locked seas, and its 

 border tribes and nations are isolated by means of peninsulas and islands, 

 so that, amid all the resources of modern civilization, the individuality 

 of nations has been preserved to a remarkable degree, and we still 

 study among its diversified populations the relics of people and lan- 

 guages pertaining to ante-christian centuries. Altogether different is 

 it with the American continent, where the great levels are so little 

 broken, that not only the boundaries of properties and townships, but 

 even of states, provinces, and dominions, are drawn without reference 

 to any natural features of the country, except in such cases as the 

 great lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Rio Grande, and very partially in 

 that of the Mississippi. The most important navigable river of Europe, 

 moreover, flows from east to west, in one parallel of latitude, and 

 through a population in all ages rendered somewhat homogeneous by 

 influences of climate and all external circumstances ; but the Missis- 

 sippi and the Missouri together flow through 20"^ of latitude, with 

 all the varieties of climate still further increased on a continent which 

 extends its widest area within the Arctic circle, and where consequently 

 the curves of equal temperature, in the isothermal lines drawn across 

 the two continents, approach as much towards the equator in the meri- 

 dian of Canada as they recede from it in that of the west of Europe. 



Looking back into the most ancient history of Europe, we find that 

 that continent also had its northern mineral treasures : its tin, per- 

 taining to the Kassiterides, or British Islands, and its amber, found 

 then as now in most abundance on the shores of the Baltic. But it 

 was by maritime intercourse, through the agency of the Phoenician 



