“ Foster rather strikingly likens what we know of the history of the human race to the apex of a pyramid, of which we know neither the height nor extent of base. Our efforts to trace man back to his beginning would be like following down the sides of that pyramid till it reaches a firm base, we know not where. Many geologists believe in a great ice-sheet which at one time had settled upon the northern parts of America, and covered it down to a line that extends across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and westerly in a direction of some variableness. ”

“ Their old men preserved the sacred traditions of their race. Their braves wore the scars and trophies of a noble manhood, and their young men were in training to be the warriors of their tribes in defence or conquest.
These, argued Pontiac, were the heritage which the Great Spirit had assigned to his red children. The spoiler had come among them from across the salt sea, and woe and ruin for the Indian had come with him. The white man could scorn the children of the forest, but could not be their friend or helper. Let the Indian be content and proud to remain an Indian. ”

“ So unexpected was this onslaught that the very stones on the mountain sides were believed to have been turned into men. It was the armed array of the insurgent Quichuas who had come by forced marches to the help of their old masters. The memory of this great struggle was fresh in men’s minds when the Spaniards arrived, and as the new conquerors passed over the battlefield, on their way to Cuzco, they saw the stuffed skins of the vanquished Chancas set up as memorials by the roadside. ”

“ The idea of a phantom or vanishing island, too, is very old,—as old, doubtless, as the fact of fog-banks and mirage,—and it is well exemplified in those mysterious visions which enticed the sailors of Bristol to many a fruitless quest before the discovery of America, and for centuries tantalized the inhabitants of the Canaries with hope of discovery. The Atlantic islands were not all isles of the blessed ”

“ The white settlers on the frontiers found no peace from Indian alarms and onsets save in the winter. From spring to the early part of the autumn, the settlers, cooped up in the forts, or ever at watch in their fields, had no security or comfort. The approach of winter was hailed as a jubilee in cabin and farm, with bustle and hilarity. But after the first set-in of winter aspects came a longer or shorter interval of warm, smoky, hazy weather, which would tempt the Indians—as if a brief return of summer—to renew their incursions on the frontiers. ”

“ If Spain, Italy, and England gained consequence by the discoveries of Columbus and Cabot, there were other national prides to be gratified by the priority which the Basques, the Normans, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scandinavians, to say nothing of Asiatic peoples, claimed as their share in the gift of a new world to the old. The records which these peoples present as evidences of their right to be considered the forerunners of the Spanish and English expeditions have in every case been questioned by those who are destitute of the sympathetic credence of a common kinship. ”

“ THE ancient so-called civilization which the Spaniards found in Mexico and Central America is the subject of much controversy: in the first place as regards its origin, whether indigenous, or allied to and derived from the civilizations of the Old World; and in the second place as regards its character, whether it was something more than a kind of grotesque barbarism, or of a nature that makes even the Spanish culture, which supplanted it, inferior in some respects by comparison. ”

“ Narratives there are which for ages to come will gather all the exciting elements of tragedy and romance, and occasionally even of comedy, as, set down in the language of the woods, without the constraints of art or grammar, they make us for the moment companions of some imperilled man or woman who borrowed of the bear, the deer, the fox, or the beaver, their several instincts and stratagems for outwitting pursuit and clinging to dear life. ”

“ The Norsemen have passed into credible history as the most hardy and venturesome of races. That they colonized Iceland and Greenland is indisputable. That their eager and daring nature should have deserted them at this point is hardly conceivable. Skirting the Greenland shores and inuring themselves to the hardships and excitements of northern voyaging, there was not a long stretch of open sea before they could strike the Labrador coast. ”

“ The cartography of the sixteenth century shows that the narrative and its accompanying map made an impression on the public mind, but from that day to this it has been apparent that there can be no concurrence of opinion as to what island the Frislanda of the Zeni was, if it existed at all except in some disordered or audacious mind; and, as a matter of course, the distant regions of Estotiland and Drogeo have been equally the subject of belief and derision. No one can be said wholly to have taken the story out of the category of the uncertain. ”

“ The promulgation of the theory of the sphericity of the earth and the approximate determination of its size drew attention afresh to the problem of the distribution of land and water upon its surface, and materially modified the earlier conception. The increase of geographical knowledge along lines of trade, conquest, and colonization had greatly extended the bounds of the known world since Homer’s day, but it was still evident that by far the larger portion of the earth, taking the smallest estimate of its size, was still undiscovered,—a fair field for speculation and fantasy. ”

“ The sovereign was the centre of all civilization and all knowledge. All literary culture, all the religious ceremonial which had grown up with the extension of the empire, had the Inca for their centre, as well as all the military operations and all laws connected with civil administration. Originally but the Sinchi, or chief of a small ayllu, the greatness of successive Incas grew with the extension of their power, until at last they were looked upon almost as deities by their subjects. ”

“ After describing the character of the written, graphic, or symbolic records, which the student of history has to deal with in tracing North American history back before the Conquest, he adds, while he deprives mythology of any historical value, that the myths, being kept fresh by repetition, were also nourished constantly by the manifestations of nature, which gave them birth. So while taking issue with those who find history buried in the myths, he warns us to remember that the American myths are not the reflections of history or heroes. ”

“ A more fruitful cause of trouble is inherent in the Greek manner of thinking of the world. It is often difficult to know whether a writer means the planet, or whether he means the agglomeration of known lands which later writers called ἡ οἰκουμένη. It is not impossible that when writers refer to the earth as encircled by the river Oceanus, they mean, not the globe, but the known lands, the eastern continent, as we say, what the Romans sometimes called orbis terrae or orbis terrarum, a term which may mean the “circle of the lands,” not the “orb of the earth.” ”

“ The discoveries made by the ancients in the ocean, of the Canaries and other islands known to them, were speedily forgotten, while their geographic myths were superseded by a ranker growth. The Saturnian continent, Meropis, Atlantis, the Fortunate Isles, the Hesperides, were relegated to the dusty realm of classical learning; but the Atlantic was not barren of their like. Mediæval maps swarmed with fabulous islands, and wild stories of adventurous voyages divided the attention with tales of love and war. Antillia was the largest, and perhaps the most famous, of these islands ”

“ In the fourth century we have evidence of an attempt to search out the secrets of the ocean after the manner of Hanno and Himilko. In that century, Pytheas made his famous voyage to the lands of tin and amber, discovering the still mysterious Thule; while at the same time his countryman Euthymenes sailed southward to the Senegal. With these exceptions we hear of no Grecian or Roman explorations in the Atlantic, and meet with no indication that they were aware of any other lands beyond the sea than the Fortunate Isles or the Hesperides of the early poets. ”

“ Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children,—there is not an old man in Greece. You have no old traditions, and know of but one deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind, both by flood and fire ”

“ Here we have the wilderness, its primeval forests, its sea-like lakes, its threading rivers, shrunken or swollen, its cataracts and its confluent streams, its marshy expanses, bluffs, and plains, and its resources, abundant or scant, for sustaining life of beasts or men, all touched in feature or full portrayal by the charming skill of those to whom the sight was novel and bewildering. ”

“ There are many reasons for believing that if the French had been able to hold alone an undisputed dominion in the interior of the continent, their relations with the Indian tribes, if not wholly pacific, would have been far more amicable than those which followed upon the hot rivalry with the English for the possession of their territories. The French were the wiser, the more tolerant and friendly of the two, in their intercourse with and treatment of the savages, with whom they found it so easy to affiliate. ”

“ Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic currents divide the North American continent. ”

“ This study of modern savage life, in arts, marriages, and relationships, morals, religion, and laws, is, as he holds, a necessary avenue to the knowledge of a condition of the early man, from which by various influences the race has advanced to what is called civilization. His result in this comparative study—not indeed covering all the phases of savage life—he made known in his Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man. ”

“ The existence of the ocean plateaus revealed by the soundings of the “Dolphin” and the “Challenger” proves nothing as to their having been once raised above the waves; the most of the Atlantic islands are sharply cut off from them. Even granting the prehistoric migration of plants and animals between America and Europe, as we grant it between America and Asia, it does not follow that it took place across the mid-ocean, and it would still be a long step from the botanic “bridge” and elevated “ridge” to the island empire of Plato. ”

“ The Quichua language was spoken over a vast area of the Andean region of South America. The dialects only differ slightly, and even the language of the Collas, called by the Spaniards Aymara, is identical as regards the grammatical structure, while a clear majority of the words are the same. The general language of Peru belongs to that American group of languages which has been called agglutinative by William von Humboldt. These languages form new words by a process of junction which is much more developed in them than in any of the forms of speech in the Old World. ”

“ It is certainly in this way possible that the Chinese or Japanese may have helped populate the western slopes of the American continent. There is no improbability even in the Malays of southeastern Asia extending step by step to the Polynesian islands, and among them and beyond them, till the shores of a new world finally received the impress of their footsteps and of their ethnic characteristics. We may very likely recognize not proofs, but indications, along the shores of South America, that its original people constituted such a stock, or were increased by it. ”