ge of man in America. In Nicaragua, in Central
America, the imprints of human feet have been found, deeply buried over
twenty feet below the present surface of the soil, under repeated
deposits of volcanic rock. These impressions must have been made in
soft muddy soil which was then covered by some geological convulsion
occurring long ages ago. Even more striking discoveries have been made
along the Pacific coast of South America. Near the mouth of the
Esmeraldas river in Ecuador, over a stretch of some sixty miles, the
surface soil of the coast covers a bed of marine clay. This clay is
about eight feet thick. Underneath it is a stratum of sand and loam
such as might once have itself been surface soil. In this lower bed
there are found rude implements of stone, ornaments made of gold, and
bits of broken pottery. Again, if we turn to the northern part of the
continent we find remains of the same kind, chipped implements of stone
and broken fragments of quartz buried in the drift of the Mississippi
and Missouri valleys. These have sometimes been found lying beside or
under the bones of elephants and animals unknown in North America since
the period of the Great Ice. Not many years ago, some men engaged in
digging a well on a hillside that was once part of the beach of Lake
Ontario, came across the remains of a primitive hearth buried under the
accumulated soil. From its situation we can only conclude that the men
who set together the stones of the hearth, and lighted on it their
fires, did so when the vast wall of the northern glacier was only
beginning to retreat, and long before the gorge of Niagara had begun to
be furrowed out of the rock.

Many things point to the conclusion that there were men in North and
South America during the remote changes of the Great Ice Age. But how
far the antiquity of man on this continent reaches back into the
preceding ages we cannot say.

CHAPTER III

THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA

Of the uncounted centuries of the history of the red man in America
before the coming of the Europeans we know very little indeed. Very few
of the tribes possessed even a primitive art of writing. It is true
that the Aztecs of Mexico, and the ancient Toltecs who preceded them,
understood how to write in pictures, and that, by this means, they
preserved some record of their rulers and of the great events of their
past. The same is true of the Mayas of Central America, whose ruined
temples are still to be t