236 DR. DOULEK/S CALCULATION. 



may have been derived from one of the Indian graves, which 

 are very numerous in this locality. Again, Count Pourtalis has 

 found some human bones in a calcareous conglomerate, esti- 

 mated by Agassiz to be ten thousand years old ; and finally, 

 Dr. Douler obtained, from an excavation near New Orleans, 

 some charcoal and a human skeleton, to which he i& inclined 

 to attribute an antiquity of no less than fifty thousand years. 

 None of these cases, however, can be regarded as entirely con- 

 clusive ; and on the whole, though the idea is certainly much 

 less improbable than it was some years ago, there does not 

 as yet appear to be any satisfactory proof that man co- existed 

 in America with the mammoth and mastodon. 



If, however, the facts above recorded justify the conclusion 

 that parts, at least, of North America once supported a nu- 

 merous and agricultural population, then we cannot but 

 ask, What fatal cause destroyed this earlier civilisation ? 

 Why were these fortifications forsaken these cities in ruins ? 

 How were the populous nations which once inhabited the rich 

 American valleys reduced to the poor tribes of savages which 

 the Europeans found there ? Did the North and South once 

 before rise up in arms against one another ? " Did the 

 terrible appellation of ' The Dark and Bloody Land/ applied 

 to Kentucky, commemorate these ancient wars?" Absit 

 omen. Let us hope that our kinsmen in America may yet 

 pause ere they, in like manner, sacrifice a common prosperity 

 to a mutual hatred. 



