lelism of the palaeolithic ages in the Eastern and Western
hemispheres is still more or less disputed by anthropologists, but the
general opinion seems to be this: If not two peoples, the River-drift
men and the Cave men were certainly distinct sections of the same race
which found their way into Europe at widely-separated times, the former
having far the higher antiquity. It is believed by Dr. Boyd Dawkins
(from whose celebrated cave-explorations in Great Britain has been
derived a representative series of specimens for the museum) "that the
River-drift man is as completely extinct at the present time as the
woolly rhinoceros or the cave bear" which he fed upon; but all authors
identify the men of the caves with the Eskimos, who there, as well as
here, were forced to retreat by the pressure of a race of new-comers,
superior in prowess and cultivation, whose traces we call _neolithic_.

In America, however (where the Atlantic coast, at least, does not afford
caverns like those of Western Europe), the evidence all goes to show
that palaeolithic men were in continuous possession of the region from
the time when they first appeared until driven northward by the Indians,
perhaps close upon the retreat of the great glacier. Returning to the
Abbott collection, we shall find that it contains a large quantity of
rude arrow-points, scrapers, and other forms of stone implements, some
of which are much better than any of the "turtle-backs" or other
palaeoliths from the lower gravels. These are found in the upper part of
the drift, resting upon them and buried in the humus _above_: in the
latter position they are, of course, more or less intermixed with the
jasper and quartz relics of the modern Indian; but these are always made
of argillite, are ruder, are much weather-worn, and never occur in the
"open-air workshops" of the Indians, where quantities of flint-flakes
and unfinished implements of jasper and quartz and of superior pattern
are found lying together within a limited space. These argillite points
and scrapers seem to belong to the palaeolithic man toward the end of his
"age," manifesting a higher stage of culture reached by gradual
improvement. It thus appears that while in Europe the rude-stone age was
divided into two eras,--the River-drift and the Cave,--in Eastern
America the aboriginal Eskimos held sway without interruption, and
slowly bettered themselves through unnumbered centuries, until at last
they were driven i