3o4 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 282 



committee on the archseological importance of such an exhibition 

 His remarks set forth more forcibly than has been done elsewhere 

 the advancement to this branch of science that is likely to result 

 from such an exhibition, and the importance of securing the mate- 

 rial for it at once. The copious extracts given below will be found 

 interesting : — 



" The value of great national fairs or expositions has been 

 abundantly shown by the history of such enterprises, alike in 

 America and in Europe. A great national fair is a stupendous ob- 

 ject-lesson in industrial civilization. 



"The discovery of America is the event which it is designed to 

 celebrate, and its importance is unparalleled in the history of human 

 progress. At that time a continent was found peopled by savages 

 and barbarians, who did not occupy the land, but who were scat- 

 tered along the water-courses and shores m little tribes far distant 

 from one another. In their ignorance the beautiful earth, with all 

 its potential gifts for civilized man, was but a hunting-ground, a 

 berry-patch, a tobacco-garden, and a battle-field. But the discov- 

 ery of this new world gave North and South America to the plough, 

 the mine, the workshop, the highway, and the market. A new 

 world was delivered to civilized man as a theatre for new and high- 

 ly developed industries, and, better than all, as a theatre for new 

 and highly developed institutions, founded upon principles that 

 recognize a wider liberty and more just equality, and a fraternity 

 that embraces a greater scope of imperative duties, than had 

 previously been recognized in the history of man. This great gift 

 to mankind was not the result of accident through the drifting of 

 tempest-tossed sailors from far-off Asia to the golden strands of 

 the West ; it was not the gift of chance through the wandering of 

 barbaric Norsemen to the bleak lands of the north-east coast. 

 Civilization discovered America by the light of science. Columbus, 

 a great scholar, a scientific investigator, a man whose insight pene- 

 trated to the great secrets of nature in the light of the science of 

 his time, — which was indeed but dim, — by means of one of the 

 grandest scientific inductions in history, accepted the conclusion 

 that the earth is a sphere, and with a sublime faith in scientific in- 

 ductions he sailed into an unknown sea, inhabited by the monsters 

 of mythology, and beset with the dangers of superstitious credulity, 

 and through this ignorance he sailed away until he discovered the 

 new land ; and the inductions of science were verified by the ap- 

 pearance of continents and islands, from which great mountains 

 reared their tops into the heavens. There, too, great lakes were 

 found whose billows were destined to rock the commerce of many 

 peoples, and there great rivers were revealed upon whose turbulent 

 currents the navies of industry now ride. To celebrate the dis- 

 covery of America by Columbus is to celebrate the greatest event 

 of human history. * 



" But it is not my task to speak of the value to civilization of the 

 proposed exposition, nor of the importance of the event which it is 

 designed to celebrate ; nor even to show that such a celebration 

 would be signally appropriate to the people who are the chief bene- 

 ficiaries of that great scientific discovery, but simply to set forth 

 the extent to which the great exposition may be made interesting 

 and instructive to the people by making an exhibit of the archeol- 

 ogy of the New World. 



" The debris of forgotten culture of the world was long held to 

 be refuse, unsightly and loathsome ; but the time has arrived when 

 this refuse of uncultured man is esteemed by the enlightened man 

 as the priceless relics of antiquity. The ruins of an ancient city 

 that were worthless a few decades ago, are, by the processes of 

 modern investigation into the history and growth of human culture, 

 transformed into values that nations covet ; and civilized men are 

 everywhere throughout the world engaged in exhuming from the 

 ruins of ancient cities the treasures of history. Societies are or- 

 ganized for the collection of the material, and colleges and univer- 

 sities are engaged in its investigation, and the libraries of the 

 world are daily enriched with the volumes of this new learning. 



" The events of history that are recorded by contemporaneous 

 writers are colored with prejudice and blurred with ignorance ; but 

 the records that are preserved in the imperishable works of man 

 are not tainted with baneful inspiration and false statement, but 

 tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. In the past, history was 

 the theme for literary exploration ; in the present, history is the 



theme of profound investigation ; and history has become a science 

 because it is founded upon archjeology. It is thus that the ruins 

 of a temple, a tower buried in its own dt'bris, an inscription on a 

 rock, a bronze spear, a stone knife, or a potsherd, has a value. A 

 mound or a monument is a volume of history, and a ruined city a 

 great library. 



" The people who were found in America, the tribes of savages 

 and barbarians, are rapidly being absorbed among the people of 

 civilization. Their history was written ; their artisans, their war- 

 riors, their statesmen, and their poets are forgotten ; but the ves- 

 tiges of their history, their archseologic records, are widely scat- 

 tered. They are found buried in ruined towns and villages ; they 

 are covered by innumerable mounds of earth that were built as- 

 sites for their council-houses, as places for worship, and as ceme- 

 teries for their dead ; they are found in countless stone-walled 

 graves ; they are found in innumerable refuse-heaps, the dchris of 

 the kitchens of the savage man ; they are found in every ploughed 

 field and on every hillside, and scattered over every mountain ; and 

 from these sources they must be taken, if we are to reconstruct 

 the ancient history of America. But every dust-laden breeze 

 buries them deeper, every storm of sand serves to hide them more 

 effectually; the furrowing of every field is an agency for their de- 

 struction ; the working of every road, the construction of every 

 railway, the erection of every building, makes these relics 

 rarer and more valuable; and ere they are lost I beg they 

 may be secured. The whole civilized world is interested in 

 their collection and preservation, and the people of other lands 

 are gathering and carrying them away by cargoes to enrich 

 the museums and the great universities and splendid capi- 

 tals of Europe ; while in America only a few quiet students have 

 become interested in these materials of American histor}', and un- 

 til within a few years we have been almost wholly neglectful of 

 things which by time are becoming more and more valuable. 



" The wealth and variety of the materials of American history 

 are but little appreciated. The people who inhabited the American 

 continent before its discovery were not all of one race, but of 

 many. In North America alone there were more than seventy-five 

 distinct stocks, having radically distinct languages and mvthologies, 

 having independent and diverse institutions, and having diverse 

 and multifarious arts. At the north we have the igloo-dwellers 

 that live by the shores of the frozen seas ; farther to the south we 

 have races occupying dwellings made of forest timber; other races 

 wove their habitations of reeds ; others built their towns of the 

 clay of mother-earth ; and others erected their buildings of stones 

 quarried from the cliffs ; while still others hewed themselves habi- 

 tations in the solid rock. Some dwelt on towering and almost in- 

 accessible cliffs, while other towns were erected among the crags 

 and cinders of extinct volcanoes. Some races were hunters, other 

 races were fishermen, still other races were agriculturists. Some 

 races worshipped the sun and moon and stars, and the gods of the 

 cardinal points ; other races made the mountains and the rivers 

 the object of their principal worship ; and all worshipped strange 

 mythologic beasts. All of the tribes were organized into bodies 

 politic as bodies of kindred, but the method of organization was 

 multifarious. Many tongues were spoken : harsh consonantal and 

 guttural languages were found in the cold climate of the extreme 

 north and south, vocalic and musical languages were found in the 

 sunny lands of the middle zones. Everywhere the tribes had 

 learned to use picture-writing, and to record events with pictures 

 of men and beasts and many conventional signs. They made 

 tools and implements of stone and bone and shell and horn and 

 wood. They made canoes and boats of bark and logs, they made 

 rafts and basket-boats of weeds, and they made kayaks of skins ; 

 and in such crafts they navigated the rivers, the lakes, and the 

 seas. The relics of all these mythologies, religions, institutions, 

 languages, and arts, must be recovered, if we are to preser\'e the 

 ancient history of America; and the work must be done soon, or 

 they will be lost. 



" It is possible to make the four-hundredth anniversary of the 

 discovery of America an occasion to collect and preserve the an- 

 cient history of the country, to gather the materials of its archaeol- 

 ogy, and to put them into one grand international museum at the 

 seat of government of the United States. No other enterprise m, 



