the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow. When he showed that the landfall of Vespucius on his first voyage was near Cape Honduras and had nothing whatever to do with the Pearl Coast, he began to follow the right trail, and so the facts which had puzzled everybody began at once to fall into the right places. This is all made clear in the seventh chapter of the present work, where the general argument of Varnhagen is in many points strongly reinforced. The evidence here set forth in connection with the Cantino map is especially significant.

It is interesting on many accounts to see the first voyage of Vespucius thus elucidated, though it had no connection with the application of his name by Waldseemüller to an entirely different region from any that was visited upon that voyage. The real significance of the third voyage of Vespucius, in connection with the naming of America, is now set forth, I believe, for the first time in the light thrown upon the subject by the opinions of Ptolemy and Mela. Neither Humboldt nor Major nor Harrisse nor Varnhagen seems to have had a firm grasp of what was in Waldseemüller's mind when he wrote the passage photographed below in vol. ii. p. 136 of this work. It is only when we keep the Greek and Roman theories in the foreground and unflinchingly bar out that intrusive modern atlas, that we realize what the Freiburg geographer meant and why Ferdinand Columbus was not in the least shocked or surprised.

I have at various times given lectures on the discovery of America and questions connected therewith, more especially at University College, London, in 1879, at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, in 1880, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1890, and in the course of my work as professor in the Washington University at St. Louis; but the present work is in no sense whatever a reproduction of such lectures.

Acknowledgments are due to Mr. Winsor for his cordial permission to make use of a number of reproductions of old maps and facsimiles already used by him in the "Narrative and Critical History of America;" they are mentioned in the lists of illustrations. I have also to thank Dr. Brinton for allowing me to reproduce a page of old Mexican music, and the Hakluyt Society for permission to use the Zeno and Catalan maps and the view of Kakortok church. Dr. Fewkes has very kindly favoured me with a sight of proof-sheets of some recent monographs by Bandelier. And for courteous assistance at various libraries I have most particularly to thank Mr. Kiernan of Harvard University, Mr. Appleton Griffin of the Boston Public Library, and Mr. Uhler of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

There is one thing which I feel obliged, though with extreme hesitation and reluctance, to say to my readers in this place, because the time has come when something ought to be said, and there seems to be no other place available for saying it. For many years letters—often in a high degree interesting and pleasant to receive—have been coming to me from persons with whom 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 25
• Lower, middle, and upper status of savagery 26
• Lower status of barbarism; it ended differently in the two hemispheres; in ancient America there was no pastoral stage of development 27
• Importance of Indian corn 28
• Tillage with irrigation 29
• Use of adobe-brick and stone in building 29
• Middle status of barbarism 29, 30
• Stone and copper tools 30
• Working of metals; smelting of iron 30
• Upper status of barbarism 31
• The alphabet and the beginnings of civilization 32
• So-called "civilizations" of Mexico and Peru 33, 34
• Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization" 35
• Value and importance of the term "barbarism" 35, 36
• The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified in ancient America 36, 37
• Survival of bygone epochs of culture; work of the Bureau of Ethnology 37, 38
• Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal America 38, 39
• Tribes in the upper status of savagery; Athabaskans, Apaches, Shoshones, etc. 39
• Tribes in the lower status of barbarism; the Dakota group or family