t a race may early reach a limit of
culture beyond which, as a race, they can not pass. Should the American
discoveries establish the fact that the River Drift tribes are also
Eskimos, then we are fairly entitled to consider them the remnant of
a people who once held possession of all the globe, but who have been
driven to the inhospitable regions of the North by the pressure of later
people. What changes have come over the earth since that early time? In
the long lapse of years that have gone by newer races, advancing by
slow degrees, have at last achieved civilization. The fiat of Omnipotent
power could have created the world in a perfected form for the use
of man, but instead of so doing, Infinite Wisdom allowed slow-acting
causes, working through infinite years, to develop the globe from a
nebulous mass. Man could, indeed, have been created a civilized being,
but instead of this, his starting-point was certainly very low. He was
granted capacities in virtue of which he has risen. We are not to say
what the end shall be, but we think it yet far off.

Illustration of Stone Implement.----------

REFERENCES

(1) The manuscript of this chapter was submitted to Dr. C. C.
Abbott, of Trenton, New Jersey, for criticism.
(2) Dana's "Manual of Geology," p. 735, _et seq._
(3) Ibid., p. 753.
(4) Whitney's "Geology of California," Vol. I.
(5) Whitney's "Geological Survey of California," Vol. I.
(6) Dr. Newbury's "Geological Survey of California."
(7) Whitney's "Auriferous Gravels of California," p. 283.
(8) Cambridge Lecture, 1878.
(9) Cambridge Lecture, 1878.
(10) "Native Races," Vol. IV, p. 698.
(11) In general, all about Sonora, in the auriferous gravels,
are found bones of extinct animals, and, associated with them,
many relics of the works of human hands. These are found at
various depths down to one hundred feet. (Whitney's "Auriferous
Gravels," p. 263.)
(12) _American Journal of Science,_ Vol. XIX, p. 176, 1880.
(13) "Auriferous Gravels," p. 279.
(14) Wright's "Studies in Science and Religion," p. 289.
(15) Dawkins, in Southall's "Pliocene Man," p. 18.
(16) Southall's "Pliocene Man," p. 19.
(17) Schoolcraft's "Archaeology," Vol. I, p. 105.
(18) As bearing on the question of Pliocene man, we might refer
to the impression of human (?) foot-prints in the sand-stone
quarry of the State prison