406 SUPPOSES PREVALENCE OF ONE CRANIAL TYPE 



Iroquois spread around them. They too hare now nearly vanished 

 from the scene of their former power under other influences, and may 

 soon, like the Eries and Hurons, he remembered only by a name ; but 

 when we find such extraordinary vicissitudes occurring during the brief 

 space, of which we have any certain record, we cease to be so much 

 surprized at the total disappearance of the Mound Builders and other 

 prehistoric races. 



SUPPOSED PREVALENCE OF ONE CRANIAL TYPE 

 THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., 



PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO. 



Read before the . American Association for the advancement of 

 Science, at Montreal, August \1th, 1857- 



Among the various grounds on which Columbus founded his belief 

 in tbe existence of an undiscovered continent beyond the Atlantic, 

 especial importance was attached to the fact that the bodies of two 

 dead men had been cast ashore on the island of Mores, differing 

 essentially in features and physical characteristics from any known 

 race. When at length the great discoverer of this "Western world 

 had set his foot on the islands first visited by him, the peculiarities 

 which marked the gentle and friendly race of Guanahane were noted 

 with curious minuteness ; and their " tawny or copper-hue/' their 

 straight, coarse, black hair, strange features, and well-develloped 

 forms, were all recorded as objects of interest, by the Spaniards. On 

 their return the little caravel of Columbus was freighted not only 

 with gold and other coveted products of the new world, but with nine 

 of its natives, brought from the Islands of San Salvador and His- 

 paniola, — eight of whom survived to gaze on the strange civilization 

 of ancient Spain, and to be themselves objects of scarcely less aston- 

 ishment than if they had come from another planet. Six of these 

 representatives of the western continent, who accompanied Columbus 

 to Barcelona, where the Spanish Court then was, were baptised with 

 the utmost state and ceremony, as the first fruits offered to heaven 

 from the new found world. Ferdinand and the enthusiastic and sus- 

 ceptible Isabella, with the Prince Juan, stood sponsors for them at 

 the font ; and when, soon after, one of them, who had been retained 



