I am not acquainted, and I have always done my best to
answer them. It is a long time since such letters came to form the
larger part of a voluminous mass of correspondence. The physical fact
has assumed dimensions with which it is no longer possible to cope. If I
were to answer all the letters which arrive by every mail, I should
never be able to do another day's work. It is becoming impossible even
to _read_ them all; and there is scarcely time for giving due attention
to one in ten. Kind friends and readers will thus understand that if
their queries seem to be neglected, it is by no means from any want of
good will, but simply from the lamentable fact that the day contains
only four-and-twenty hours.

CAMBRIDGE, _October 25, 1891._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT AMERICA.

PAGE
The American aborigines 1

Question as to their origin 2, 3

Antiquity of man in America 4

Shell-mounds, or middens 4, 5

The Glacial Period 6, 7

Discoveries in the Trenton gravel 8

Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota 9

Mr. Cresson's discovery at Claymont, Delaware 10

The Calaveras skull 11

Pleistocene men and mammals 12, 13

Elevation and subsidence 13, 14

Waves of migration 15

The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period 16

The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men 17-19

There was probably no connection or intercourse by
water between ancient America and the Old World 20

There is one great American red race 21

Different senses in which the word "race" is used 21-23

No necessary connection between differences in culture
and differences in race 23

Mr. Lewis Morgan's classification of grades of culture 24-32

Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism 25

Origin of pottery