Proceedings, fyc. xli 



whether on the coast of the sea or in the interior of the land, but 

 especially dependant on the zone within which the locality existed. 

 The higher or moral cultivation was thus, by a Providential design, 

 prepared for its perfection through these material instruments. 

 In becoming better acquainted with the circumstances under which all 

 this was promoted, it appears that there existed some substance that 

 must have acted as the original promoter, forming, as it were, the 

 basis of the benefits arising from ulterior discoveries made for the 

 development of civilisation. The truth hereof we have to search for, 

 as already mentioned, " among the first leaves of the often mysterious 

 Stone Book." To accomplish this, I propose that we should inquire 

 into the incidents connected with the early life of the aboriginal oc- 

 cupiers of some portion of our globe, as we may be persuaded that, 

 under Providence as the Eider, even the most obscure corner of the 

 world will reveal what may be termed the fundamental mysteries of 

 civilisation. I therefore ask you kindly to follow, and by your facul- 

 ties to penetrate with me into the interior of some desolate tract of 

 the Andean region, there to watch some of the early days of the 

 aboriginal inhabitant, with the object of tracing out what in reality 

 may have happened, by experience, to that son of nature " twenty 

 centuries ago."* 



Man in the wilderness — man in his natural position, and so as we 

 have reason to imagine him in the earliest stage of life — the life of 

 an aboriginal family, is what we here are going to contemplate. It was 

 after the sun had passed the meridian, when we find the robust 

 hunter, eagerly following the rapid movements of one of the larger 

 quadrupeds of the forest, which (avoiding its persecutor on the slope 

 of the cordillera at the precipitous border of a mountain stream) 

 made its sudden escape, passing the boisterous torrent. The hunter 

 had been defeated ; he had failed to stun or kill the "danta" (the 

 tapyrus americamis), which on several occasions had provided him 

 with food ; he was tired, and he went to quench his thirst ; he sat 

 down on the border of the rivulet, contemplating the escape of the 

 too swift danta. He had a wife and children, and that clay had been 

 one of disappointment. He went a second time to refresh himself 

 with the crystalline waters, when his eye met an object not far from 

 the cascade, among the sands of the rivulet. Without care beyond 

 anything that would mitigate hunger, he notwithstanding soon found 

 himself close to the strange object which he contemplated, and being 

 persuaded that it was not at all like what he generally met with 

 on the borders of brooks and rivers — he found it, therefore, to be a 

 strange object lying among the dark-colored sand on the border of 

 the streamlet. He stood there at the foot of the fall, observing these 

 small, flat, smooth and bright particles, to which the evening sun 



* See Prescott's "Conquests of Mexico and Peru," regarding the sup- 

 posed period of populating South America. 



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