1 8 Prehistoric Races. 



rate one race from another, and keep both unmixed. 

 Or else the prehistoric dissolves into the historic, on 

 the same ground; as in America, which is certainly 

 now the subject of luminous history, we have only 

 to go back four hundred years and we reach the 

 line and cross it, and we are away in dim prehistoric 

 America. So too is it with the greater part of 

 Africa. In Iceland, Britain, Gaul, and Germany, in 

 the lands of the North-East, overflowing with that 

 population of Hun and Goth which poured into 

 Europe, we have to travel back not two thousand 

 years and we are stranded on the shores of the pre- 

 historic. All the while, during four and six thou- 

 sand years, other lands are abounding in monuments, 

 written records, trustworthy traditions. But, over 

 the ground of the prehistoric, records are wanting ; 

 the induction of science alone is available; and we 

 interpret as best we can the relics of archaeology, of 

 palaeontology, of anthropology, which have escaped 

 the ravages of time; and we note the few geological 

 touches which the same ravages of time have left 

 behind them. These geological data are few, for 

 the records of the rocks were far on toward com- 

 pleting the last chapter of their history, when man 

 with his hopes and his fears entered on this arena 

 of his short and anxious career. 



ii. Some lands seem never to have had a pre- 

 Lauds never historic humanity to grace them or to 

 Prehistoric, blight them. All humanity there, how- 

 ever ancient, is in the full light of history. 



