232 THE ANCIENT MINERS OF LAZE SUPEEIOE. 



of pestilence, such as in the seventeenth century, swept away the 

 Messacheuseuks and Narragansetts of New England — appears to have 

 abruptly arrested their labours, and to have restored the scenes of 

 their industrious progression to the silence amid which the later 

 forest-wilderness arose. It is not necessary to assume a very great 

 antiquity for the era of this abortive American civilization. It has 

 been a favourite theory with some, to trace analogies between the 

 arts of Central America and those of Egypt's primitive civilization- 

 But those who do so, forget that the era of Montezuma is known, 

 and that to a past so recent as that we can assign so much of Aztec 

 and Toltec art, that a very few more centuries, at most, ma}- suffice to 

 embrace the utmost that we know of. Assuredly nothing has been 

 observed, as yet, pertaining either to the ethnology or the archaeolo- 

 gy of the new world, which may not be compatible with its first 

 occupation by a human population subsequent to the Christian era. 

 Much, however, may yet be brought to light, in reference to America's 

 prehistoric centuries ; and meanwhile it seems premature to affirm as 

 Dr. Schoolcraft does of the Lake Superior basin : "There are no arti- 

 ficial mounds, embankments, or barrows in this basin, to denote that 

 the country had been anciently inhabited ; and when the inquiry is 

 directed to that part of the continent which extends northward from 

 its northern shores, this primitive character of the face of the country 

 becomes still more striking. It is something to affirm that the mound- 

 builders, whose works have filled the West with wonder, — quite un- 

 necessary wonder, — had never extended their sway here. The country 

 appears never to have been fought for, in ancient times, by a semi- 

 civilized or even pseudo-barbaric race. There are but few darts or 

 spear-heads. I have not traced remains of the incipient art of pot- 

 tery, known to the Algonquin and other American stocks, beyond the 

 Straits of St. Mary, which connects Lakes Huron and Superior ; and 

 am inclined to believe that they do not extend in that longitude 

 beyond the latitude of 3G° 30'. There is a fresh magnificence in the 

 ample area of Lake Superior, which appears to gainsay the former ex- 

 istence and exercise by man, of any laws of mechanical or industrial 

 power, beyond the canoe-frame and the war-club. And its storm- 

 beaten and castellated rocks however imposing, give no proofs that 

 the dust of human antiquity, in its artificial phases, has ever rested 

 on them." 



Observation has already disclosed in these northern regions the 

 trenches of the ancient miners, who supplied to the mound-builders 

 of the south the copper which they are proved to have so abundantly 

 used ; and the country has not yet been so thoroughly explored 



