raced in the tangled forests of Yucatan and
Guatemala. The ancient Peruvians also had a system, not exactly of
writing, but of record by means of QUIPUS or twisted woollen cords of
different colours: it is through such records that we have some
knowledge of Peruvian history during about a hundred years before the
coming of the Spaniards, and some traditions reaching still further
back. But nowhere was the art of writing sufficiently developed in
America to give us a real history of the thoughts and deeds of its
people before the arrival of Columbus.

This is especially true of those families of the great red race which
inhabited what is now Canada. They spent a primitive existence, living
thinly scattered along the sea-coast, and in the forests and open
glades of the district of the Great Lakes, or wandering over the
prairies of the west. In hardly any case had they any settled abode or
fixed dwelling-places. The Iroquois and some Algonquins built Long
Houses of wood and made stockade forts of heavy timber. But not even
these tribes, who represented the furthest advance towards civilization
among the savages of North America, made settlements in the real sense.
They knew nothing of the use of the metals. Such poor weapons and tools
as they had were made of stone, of wood, and of bone. It is true that
ages ago prehistoric men had dug out copper from the mines that lie
beside Lake Superior, for the traces of their operations there are
still found. But the art of working metals probably progressed but a
little way and then was lost,--overwhelmed perhaps in some ancient
savage conquest. The Indians found by Cartier and Champlain knew
nothing of the melting of metals for the manufacture of tools. Nor had
they anything but the most elementary form of agriculture. They planted
corn in the openings of the forest, but they did not fell trees to make
a clearing or plough the ground. The harvest provided by nature and the
products of the chase were their sole sources of supply, and in their
search for this food so casually offered they moved to and fro in the
depths of the forest or roved endlessly upon the plains. One great
advance, and only one, they had been led to make. The waterways of
North America are nature's highway through the forest. The bark canoe
in which the Indians floated over the surface of the Canadian lakes and
rivers is a marvel of construction and wonderfully adapted to its
purpose: This was their great invent