OF THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. II5 



times, was famous. Another evidence of primitive man undertaking 

 trading journeys is the tradition preserved in Georgia " that among 

 the Indians who inhabited the mountains, there was a certain 

 number or class who devoted their time and attention to the 

 manufacture of darts : that as soon as they had prepared a general 

 supply, they left their mountain homes and visited the seaboard and 

 intermediate localities, exchanging their spear and arrowheads for 

 other articles not to be readily obtained in the region they inhabited. 

 The further fact is stated that these persons never mingled in the 

 excitement of war, that to them a free passport was at all times 

 granted, even among tribes actually at variance with that of which 

 they were members ; that their vocation was esteemed honorable and 

 they themselves treated with universal hospitality. 



We see, therefore, that the primitive peoples of the present day 

 have a means of communicating with each other, and that prehistoric 

 man had and used his means, limited as they may have been, for 

 the purposes of communicating with his neighbors. Let us now 

 look at the evidences of his commercial transactions. 



Confining our attention for the present to the evidences in favor 

 of a prehistoric commerce having existed in both the old and new 

 worlds, to the five divisions already mentioned, let us consider these 

 divisions separately throughout their different stages. 



First : We frequently find articles belonging to the Stone Age in 

 such positions as warrant us in assuming they were placed there by 

 man. 



In speaking of the Age of Stone or Bronze or Iron, it must 

 always be borne in mind that these divisions are not in any case 

 absolutely distinct periods in the history of the world generally, nor 

 even with the one people, for, although they are to a great extent 

 distinct periods in the history of a nation, they are not so absolutely. 

 We often find the stone and bronze merging into each other, 

 creating as it were, a sort of period of transition. In the same way 

 we findvthe bronze and iron running side by side, even among the 

 same people, and while we are in the middle of the Iron Age, some 

 of the peoples of the world are still in the Age of Stone or merging 

 directly from it into the Age of Iron. At the time of the discovery 

 of America by Columbus, it was the Age of Bronze in Mexico and 



