334 Traces of an American Autochthon. [June, 
people, if indeed they have not perished from off the face of the 
earth. 
Have we near at hand any people that even in some respects 
meet the requirements of our supposition? I believe we have, 
in the Eskimo.! 
The similarity of the Delaware Valley implements to those of 
Europe, as already referred to, is even more marked when the 
former are compared with the relics from French caves. The 
stone implements figured by Lartet and Christy,? illustrative of 
the weapons, domestic utensils, and ornaments of the reindeer 
people of Southern France, are, in part, so exactly reproduced 
in the palæolithic relics of New Jersey, that a close relationship 
of the two peoples suggests itself ; although no caves such as are 
found in France, or engravings of extinct mammalia, have been 
discovered here. 
In the brief space allotted to a magazine article, it is not prac- 
ticable to enter minutely into detail with reference to the many 
facts having direct bearing on the question of the gravel-bed im- 
plements, their antiquity and origin. I have but briefly referred 
to the marked resemblance between New Jersey and French cave 
specimens of stone relics, and will here only add that “it would 
be easy to cite many circumstances illustrative of the resemblance 
between the condition and habits of the modern Eskimo and 
these cave dwellers of France at the reindeer period.” 3 If, there- 
fore, the rude implements of the Delaware Valley gravels re- 
semble those of the caves of France, and the French troglodytes 
were identical (?) with the Eskimo, it is fair to presume that 
the first human beings that dwelt along the shores of the Dela- 
ware were really the same people as the present inhabitants of 
Arctic America. 
It has been demonstrated, I believe, conclusively, that some 
eighty thousand years ago the last glacial epoch came to a close.* 
There was, however, no sudden change in the climate. The 
1 Since the above was written, I have received Nature for December 9, 1875, and 
find the statement there made, in a review of Dr. Rinks’s Tales and Traditions of 
indigenous 
tribes.” 
This opinion of Dr. Rinks’s, it will be noticed, if correct, is confirmatory of that ta 
in this paper, and in the February number of this journal, as to the traces 
pers occupation of this country by two peoples, as indicated by the relics now 
ere, 
? Reliquie Aquitanice, London. 1865-74. Edited by T. Rupert Jones. 
3 Reliquiæ Aquitanice, page 26. 
* Climate and Time, by Croll; Great Ice Age, by J. Geikie. 
found 
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