296 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



them that close resemblance to the Indian type which 

 these sculptures have been said to exhibit. The few 

 authentic crania from the mounds present corresponding 

 features, being far more symmetrical and better de- 

 veloped in the frontal region than those of any 

 American tribes, although somewhat resembling them 

 in the occipital outline ; ^ while one was described by 

 its discoverer (Mr. W. Marshall Anderson) as a beau- 

 tiful skull, worthy of a Greek." 



The antiquity of this remarkable race may perhaps 

 not be very great as compared with the prehistoric man 

 of Europe, although the opinion of some writers on the 

 subject seems affected by that " parsimony of time on 

 which the late Sir Charles Lyell so often dilated. The 

 mounds are all overgrown with dense forest, and one of 

 the large trees was estimated to be 800 years old, while 

 other observers consider the forest growth to indicate an 

 age of at least 1,000 years. But it is well known that it 

 requires several generations of trees to pass away before 

 the growth on a deserted clearing comes to correspond 

 with that of the surrounding virgin forest, while this 

 forest, once established, may go on growing for an 

 unknown number of thousands of years. The 800 or 

 1,000 years estimate from the growth of existing vege- 

 tation is a minimum which has no bearing whatever on 

 the actual age of these mounds ; and we might almost 

 as well attempt to determine the time of the glacial 

 epoch from the age of the pines or oaks which now 

 grow on the moraines. 



The important thing for us, however, is that when 

 North America was first settled by Europeans, the Indian 



^ Wilson's PreMstoric Man, 3rd edit. vol. ii. pp. 123-130. 



