In the majority of these mounds are found piles of masonry, earthenware, and fragments of pottery ornamented by imprinted designs on the outside, and glazed and painted within. In some places the mounds cluster into villages, where may be seen vestiges of ancient wells of regularly-cut stone, round towers in an excellent state of preservation, together with the remains of underground workshops. The people seem to have lived a long time on the banks of these rivers in a state of prosperity, when the fertile vales blossomed and bore fruit in abundance. Times of adversity, however, came, when these peaceful and prosperous people were attacked by hordes from the north-a kind of repetition of the Goths and Vandals surging down upon their Roman civilisation. When this took place they fled to the cliffs of these wonderful canñons, and erected houses upon ledges and benches in the very face of the bluffs, where nothing but a bird could reach them, except by a single dizzy trail, capable of being defended by one man against a thousand. While there was here security against invaders, they were not able to stand long sieges, and were finally obliged to move forwards to more southern climes, where they were evidently gradually pursued. Near the Moqui villages many of these dwellings are still seen, extending as much as 800 feet up the steep bluffs, faced with smooth-hewn stones, and having zigzag paths cut to them from below through the solid rock.

Dr. Foster thinks that many of the mounds located along the bluffs of the rivers were used as watch towers and signal stations, from which any anticipated event or the approach of an enemy could be signalled. Whence came this people, what was the law of their growth, and what the precursor of their decay and extinction, are natural questions to ask. The answers, however, are not as easy to give as we could wish. In order to solve as far as possible these problems, many of the mounds, and especially the extensive burial grounds, have been carefully examined. It is found that the cranial and intellectual developments were peculiar to themselves, and in no way resembling the American Indian. They appear to have been as skilled as the ancient lords of Egypt, and judging from their implements and utensils, they appear to have been larger than ordinarysized men.

The contents of these mounds have led some to the belief of the Hebrew origin of these extinct races, while others imagine the Phonicians to have established colonies here at the time when they were at the height of their maritime greatness.

These people sometimes buried, but seem generally to have burned their dead in a furnace, for in case of burning no wood ashes mingle with the bone material. The ashes were deposited in cysts, or urns

of burnt clay, and after interment walls were built around them, as if they intended sealing them up for ever. Some of these funeral urns are of extraordinary beauty of form and fine quality of material, indicating on the part of the workmen the possession of considerable artistic skill.

Pottery is generally considered a fair index of the civilisation or barbarism of a people, and seems essential to the economy of a tribe or nation. Savages of every degree have some apology for cups, bowls, or urns, but it is very rude, being formed without the use of a potter's wheel, and, if ornamented at all, the lines are irregular, like the early efforts of a school-boy; but there is no attempt at glazing, and when their articles are exposed to heat or damp they crumble. This is the kind of pottery that has always been made by the Indians, and which is made by them to-day. The pottery of the mound-builders is altogether of a higher kind, is well glazed, and tastefully ornamented. A system of water communication is found to have existed in these distant times, for channels exist which have been banked, if not constructed by man. There are bayous, or water-courses, having the appearance of canals, starting near some of these mounds, and connecting some of the important lakes, along which by the use of light boats you may even now travel for scores of miles. Doubtless a people so civilised would demand and obtain an interchange of products with distant and widely-separated settlements. What is more natural than that peoples of the same race, speech, and religion, and united by relationship of blood (which these probably were) should construct or so alter existing channels, that commercial and friendly interchange should take place.

There are also earthworks in the form of fortifications, enclosing acres of surface, which manifest no small amount of engineering skill. In some places there are parallel walls of several feet in height running along for at least a couple of miles, and enclosing ruins of various kinds.

The Indians are too migratory in their habits, too unambitious, and too unwilling to labour, to accomplish such extensive undertakings. There is a story told of a Mr. Fasset who, many years ago, pointed out one of these mounds to an Indian chief named Chickasawba, and asked him if the Indians had constructed it. The chief replied in broken English: "Injun no work-this heap big work-no Injun." There is a tradition, or perhaps the tradition of a tradition, existing among some of the Indian tribes, that a very long time ago there was a race of men who not only built mounds but houses, and cultivated lands. They all went away to the South, but no one knows when how, nor where.

These mound-builders must have been a stationary people, very numerous, governed by laws, and supported in large measure by the cultivation of the soil. There is a strong suspicion that the lates representatives of them resided in Mexico, but this is merely founded on legends.

They were evidently a worshipping people, for they have left behind them altar-mounds of a very extensive kind. The temple sites of Illinois are so lofty and imposing, so large and grand, as to call up the wildest dreams of Egypt and Persia, and awaken memories of the structures of classic lands.

American archæology, however, is of such recent date that comparatively little has been done in the way of careful investigation and comparison; but the little has had the effect of awakening aspirations that ere long will probably connect the past of America with some of the nations of antiquity. We may discover that America, so far from being a New World, strikes her roots into the hoary past, perhaps as far back as the best days of British Druidism.

Louth, July 1, 1881.

IT

THE BIBLE VIEW OF MAN.

By B. J. TUNGATE.

T is not too much to say that in the scientific theories and speculative thought of our age the old theologic conception and teaching respecting man's origin and nature are entirely ignored and put aside. Man is known no longer in his dual nature (bodily organisation and spiritual personality), his origin and nature alike are accounted for in the so-termed higher and larger scientific light; both are contained and included in the one startling hypothesis, "that men are but the outcome of a self-existent matter and energy, which are inherently endowed with power to originate all things and to bring them to that perfection which they present in man to-day, though to accomplish so much may have necessitated the evolutionary processes of an incalculable antecedent time." There can be no doubt that by far the larger school of science leans to this solution of the problem, "What is Man?" It is a theory gathering its supporters not only from the schools of scientists and philosophy, but also from the theologians and preachers of our time, and although the theory of evolution be admitted by its greatest supporters, Tyndall and Huxley, to be at present unproved, and the links of succession in the chain of development as yet incomplete, yet it seems to be the accepted solution of the difficulty and mystery of man's origin, and is taught by

CC

our scientists as though it were no less than an indubitably demonstrated fuct. So said one of its great supporters in America, just recently: "I need offer no argument for evolution, since to doubt evolution is to doubt science, and science is only another name for truth." And of course in such a statement it is implied that to doubt the scientific theory of evolution is to doubt truth itself. It is from such too-assuming conclusions of an unproved science that we strongly and sincerely dissent, not because we fear that the great facts of science will ever dethrone. God and annihilate religious truth, but even on the simple grounds of fair and honest thought, and logical accuracy and completeness. But there is a higher and more important reason why we dissent from the unproved conclusions of evolutionary science. It is this. That it (in common with all other materialistic conceptions of life, its origin and end) leaves unanswered, or answered unsatisfactorily, the great facts of man's moral sensibility, religious instincts, aspirations, and hopes. It says, with Professor Tyndall, "that the man of to-day is the child and product of incalculable antecedent time, that his physical and intellectual textures have been woven for him through phases of history and forms of existence which lead the mind back to an abysmal past." Now it is at once evident in such a theory that man's personal life, his moral wants, and intellectual existence, are left wholly unaccounted for, all that has been said relating only to exterior forms or physical organisms; and so, when pressed to account satisfactorily for the presence of moral sensibility and intellectual life in man, Evolution too often merges into a kind of materialism wherein there is little or no room for Infinite intelligence and a personal God, for here it tells us that thought, conscience, will, are but the highest functions of the finest forms of matter which enters into the human structure, that elements of phosphorous form thought-power, and that moral sensibility is but the fund of an acenmulated experience transmitted from the past. But, if this be true, what becomes of the spiritual, personal life of man? If this be true. then to men God, as a great, ever-living, overshadowing, spiritual Being can have no meaning-man's deepest yearnings after God are but a poor illusion, his religious instinct and aspiration a vain phantom and a hopeless dream. In such a theory there is not only no room for God, there is neither room for hope for men.

Can it be true then that man, the highest form of life, the noblest of existences in the universe, possessed with reason, conscience, will, capable of rising above all other forms of life and making them subservient to his purposes and aims, or ruling over them as lord and king; can it be that man, able to rise above all meanness, littleness, and selfishness, and live a pure, holy, noble, and benificent life; can

it be that as he rises to the highest altitudes of his nature, that here he only gains a land of false lights, poor illusions, and hollow mockeries and shams; that here, crying after God, he can only learn that though he alone of all existing life be capable of religion, yet religion is but an empty dream; that though he cry for a God outside and beyond him, his cry can only ring through awful space, meeting with no response, returning unanswered to his weary, panting heart? To believe this would be but to believe that when man is at his best he is also at his worst and most miserable estate. To believe this would shatter hope, crush aspiration in every noble human heart, and drape man's future in a hideous gloom. Is it not better, more hopeful, and more satisfying to our souls to come back from such poor speculation to the old Bible declaration, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and mant became a living soul."

From the hands of an all-wise, infinite God-fresh, pure, and holyman, in the morning of creation, came, and thus commenced the rugged, onward, upward march of life. He may have wandered, widely, sadly, from the path at times, yea, the history of his progress may be but a history of pain and folly, shrieking guilt, and awful sin. Still he is the Father's darling, and redemption unfolds the story of that Father's wondrous love. It tells us of a Christ who came and taught the true path of progress and development for a long-degraded and unregenerate race of men. It says that man, with all but his guilt and evil, has come from God, and that through Christ to that same God he may again return. In answer to the question, What is man? it says, majestically and plainly, "Thou didst make him a little lower than the angels, Thou didst crown him with glory and honour;" and though not yet in fallen man that altitude has been secured, it bids us look up to man's Redeemer, and see our manhood wearing its future crown. "We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour."

Here then we see at once the superiority and grandeur of the Bible view of man, whereas the scientific and speculative leave no room for religion in man's nature, regarding it only as a phantom hope, a dream of enthusiasm, only born to die. The Bible, on the other hand, accounts not only for the origin of man's physical structure, but also for the existence of moral sensibility and religious aspiration and desire.

From its commencement to its close it regards man as the only being among the myriad forms of created life capable of a religion, It asserts that man is a religious being, that the highest life he possesses is not creatural, but spiritual, and that of all created life he