and skill of Columbus were crowned with success, and
the storm-tossed Atlantic was found to lave the shores of a western
continent, reflecting minds in Europe were much interested in the
strange stories they heard of the inhabitants of the New World. On the
one hand Spanish adventurers told scarcely credited stories of populous
cities, temples glittering with gold and silver ornaments, and nations
possessed of a barbaric civilization scarcely inferior to their own. On
the other hand were accounts of morose savages, cruel and vindictive in
nature, depending on fishing and the chase for a livelihood. Nearly four
centuries have elapsed since that time. The aboriginal inhabitants have
nearly disappeared, leaving their origin and prehistoric life almost as
great a riddle to us as it was to the early colonists.

But in endeavoring to unroll the pages of their history, we have chanced
upon some strange discoveries. The Aztecs, that people whose culture is
to-day such an enigma to our scholars, are known to be a late arrival
in the valley of Anahuac. They were preceded in that section by a
mysterious people, the Toltecs, whose remains excite our liveliest
curiosity, but of which we have yet learned but little. Yucatan is shown
to have been for many centuries the home of a people whose advancement
equated that of the Aztecs at their palmiest day. Like important
discoveries attended the labors of explorers in the North. The entire
valley of its great river is known to have been the home of a numerous
population, that, from the nature of their remains, we call the
Mound-builders. Who these people were, when and whence they came,
and whither they went, are questions whose solution is by no means
accomplished. Nor are such discoveries the only results. A study of
their institutions has done much in revealing the constructions of
ancient society, and thereby throwing light on some mysterious chapters
of man's existence.

Of late years interest in the antiquity of man in America has been
reawaked by the discoveries of human remains in Pliocene deposits in
California, and the Glacial gravel of the Delaware at Trenton, New
Jersey. Before this it was supposed that we had no authentic instance
of human remains in America found under such circumstances that it was
necessary to assign to them a profound antiquity. If these latter day
discoveries be true, we can not escape the conclusion that man lived
in America at as early a date as that