vals of long-forgotten culture.
Some would even class them with the "mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley.
Other recent antiquaries, however, while fully admitting the
Aztec-Tescucan civilization to be real and historical, treat the Toltec
theory as partly or entirely mythical. One writer alleges, after the
manner of Max Mueller, that the Toltecs are "simply a personification of
the rays of light" radiating from the Aztec sun-god.

Leaving abstract theories, we shall devote this chapter to the principal
facts of American archeology--especially as regards the races and the
monuments of their long extinct civilizations. Throughout many parts of
both North and South America, and over large areas, the red-skinned
natives continued their generations as their ancestors had done through
untold centuries, scarcely rising above the state of rude, uncultured
sons of the soil living as hunters, trappers, fishers, as had been done
immemorially

When wild in woods the noble savage ran,

as Dryden puts it. But in Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America,
Colombia, and Peru there were men of the original redskin race who had
distinctly attained to civilization for unknown generations before the
time of Columbus. Not only so, but in many centers of wealth and
population the process of social improvement and advance had been
continuous for unrecorded ages; and in certain cases a long extinct
civilization had over-laid a previous civilization still more remotely
extinct. Some works constructed for supplying water, for example, could
only have been applied to that purpose when the climate or geological
conditions were quite different from what they have always been in
historical times!

Who is the red man? Compared in numbers with the yellow man, the white
man, or even the black, he is very unimportant, being only one-tenth as
great as the African race.[12] In American ethnology, however, the red
man is all-important. Primeval men of this race undoubtedly formed the
original stock whence during the centuries were derived all the numerous
tribes of "Indians" found in either North or South America. Throughout
Asia and Africa there is great diversity in type among the races that
are indigenous; but as to America, to quote Humboldt:

[Footnote 12: White or Caucasian 640,000,000, yellow or Mongolian
600,000,000, black or African 200,000,000, red or American 20,000,000.]

The Indians of New Spain [i. e., Mexico] bear a general resemblanc