most distant events of history. By remains of art I do not so much refer
to those desolate palaces which crumble forgotten in the gloom of
tropical woods, nor even the enormous earthworks of the Mississippi
valley covered with the mould of generations of forest trees, but rather
to the humbler and less deceptive relics of his kitchens and his hunts.
On the Atlantic coast one often sees the refuse of Indian villages,
where generation after generation have passed their summers in fishing,
and left the bones, shells, and charcoal as their only epitaph. How many
such summers would it require for one or two hundred people to thus
gradually accumulate a mound of offal eight or ten feet high and a
hundred yards across, as is common enough? How many generations to heap
up that at the mouth of the Altamaha River, examined and pronounced
exclusively of this origin by Sir Charles Lyell,[36-1] which is about
this height, and covers ten acres of ground? Those who, like myself,
have tramped over many a ploughed field in search of arrow-heads must
have sometimes been amazed at the numbers which are sown over the face
of our country, betokening a most prolonged possession of the soil by
their makers. For a hunting population is always sparse, and the
collector finds only those arrow-heads which lie upon the surface.

Still more forcibly does nature herself bear witness to this antiquity
of possession. Botanists declare that a very lengthy course of
cultivation is required so to alter the form of a plant that it can no
longer be identified with the wild species; and still more protracted
must be the artificial propagation for it to lose its power of
independent life, and to rely wholly on man to preserve it from
extinction. Now this is precisely the condition of the maize, tobacco,
cotton, quinoa, and mandioca plants, and of that species of palm called
by botanists the _Gulielma speciosa_; all have been cultivated from
immemorial time by the aborigines of America, and, except cotton, by no
other race; all no longer are to be identified with any known wild
species; several are sure to perish unless fostered by human care.[37-1]
What numberless ages does this suggest? How many centuries elapsed ere
man thought of cultivating Indian corn? How many more ere it had spread
over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude, and lost all semblance to its
original form? Who has the temerity to answer these questions? The
judicious thinker will perceive