The Northern Pacific farmer., 1883-10-25

ward into Russia was depressed beneath
the waves of a berg-laden sea, and aga in
lifted up so that the British Isles, then
an archipelago, again formed part of the
mainland. As the land emerged from
the water, the Pleistocene forests crept
over it, and the animals found the way
over the southern and midland counties
Such as this was the scene on which
man first appears in Europe. Rude
splfnters Of stone and roughly Clipped
pebbles Of flint and ebert, at their very
best trimmed to an almond shade, and
mostly intended for use in the hand, oc-
cur abundantly in the river deposits of
England and France in association with
the remains Of the above animals.
They are the implements Of savages
living by the chase, and probably also bv
fishing and fowling. Not only have the
Implements been discovered. but the ver ?
spots on the river bank where the hun
ter sat and made them have been iden.
tilted, as at Crawford and other places in
the valley of the Thames. Could we
have penetrated to the banks of the
guided by thin column of smoke rising
of the river-drift hunter, we might have
eccA tuo iuoA oo!oCt!Ae O'oCho OA AAut
and clipping their implements out OF
raw meal Of flesh, it may be ofreiuaeer.
mammoth, or rhinoceros, while the
children broke the silence of the eve-
ming with their shouts on those very
spots where are now to be heard, day
and night, the voices of London and
Par s.
Nor can there be much doubt as to
the relation of the river-arift hunter to
the aforementioned changes in climate
and geography, which are usually
summed up under the term Glacial. The
balance Of evidence is in favor of the
view that the hunter at Crawford was in
the valley of the Thames before the sub
mergence, and before the temperature
had reached its minimum, or in other
words, in pre-glacial times. The river
drift hunter whose implements are left
at AbbeviIle traversed the shore of a
berg laden sea. and possibly may have
inherited tradition from his ancestors
OF the famous hunting grounds then ly-
ing at the bottom Of the British Chan
mel and the great Northern Ocean. The
hunter who followed the hippopotamus
ard the reindeer in the valley Of the
Ouse, near Bedford, was there after the
relevation of the land and cutting of the
valley through the mantle of boulder
clay which had been dropped from the
melting bergs. He probably wen t
far enough northward to see the glaciers
then crowning the Pennine chain and
the mountainous regions of Wales.
Southwark the river-drift man wan
dered far and wide over France, hunting
the same animals in the valleys of the
Rhone, Loire. and Garonne as in the
valley of the Thames. In the Iberian
peninsula he was contemporary of the
African elephant, the mammoth, and the
straig ght-tusked elephant, and he camped
in the neighborhood Of both Lisbon and
Madrid, showing there as in France and
Britain, singular facility in choosing
places which became, in the long ages
which were to follow the sizes
of great capitals. He also ranged
ever Italy, leaving his imple.
ments behind the Abruzzo; and in
Greece, in the neighborhood Of Cor
NTH, he was familiar with the extinct
pign,y hypotamus. We can also track
him south of the Mediterranean by the
implements found in Oran, and near Ko-
lea in Algeria: in the Sahara, and sew
eral places in E yypt. ut Luxor they have
UScll NlSCOfClCu Ot OCA. l. AVU 4sAVCIO Ill
the breccia, out of which are hewn the
tombs of the Egyptian kings. In Pales-
tine, they have been obtained by the
and the Sea ofT.berias, and by Mr..
Slopes between Jerusalem and Bethle-
hem. Throughout this wide area the
implements are of the same rude type,
and generally Of the same materials,
f,nt or quartzite. those of Luxor and
,aiestine being identical with those in
the river valleys of Britain and France.
Throughout this area, too. the river
drift man hunted some or other of
those animals which we have MENTION
ed above.
Nor is'our survey yet ended. He is
proved by many discoveries to have
ranged over the Indian peninsula, from
the valley of the Nerbudda in the north
as far as Madras. Here we find him
forming part of a fauna in which are to
be numbered species now living in In
dia, such as the Indian rhin0ceros an |
the arnee. as we'll as distinct types OF
oxen and elephants. There were two ex.
tinct hvppopotaml in the rivers, as we'll
as living gavials, turtles, and tortoises.
1t is plain, therefore, that at this time
the higher mammals of India stood in
the same relation to the present Indian
animals as the European fauna Of the
Pleistocene does to that now living IN
Europe. In both there was similar
association of living with Q <tinct forms,
and in botn the central figure is the
river-drift hunter.
We are led from the region of tropical
India to the banks of the Delaware, in
New Jersey, by the recent discoveries of
DR.. Abbott in the neighborhood of rren-
ton, which l have had the opportunity
of examining with that gentleman and
Prof. Haynes and Lewis. The ,mple-
menjs are of the same type, and occur
under exactly the same conditions, as
The river-drift implements of Europe.
They are found in terrace of river
gravel and from overlooking the river,
and are composed OF materials derived
from the old terminal moraine which
strikes across the states of New Jersey
Lake Erie. The large blocks of stone
which it contains indicate that during
the time of its accumulation there were
ice RATS boating down the Delaware in
the spring, as in the Thames, the Seine,
andthe Somme in those days. The
identity of the implements proves that
the river-dritt hunter was in the same
rude state Of civillzation-in the Old and
New worlds, while the hand of the geo
logical clock pointed to the same hour. 1t
is not little strange that his mode of
life should have been the same in the
lands bordering on the Mediterranean,
in the tropical forests Of India, and on
both sides of the Atlantic. The hunter ol
the reindeer in the valley of tue Della
ware was the same kind OF 8 wage as the
hunter of the reindeer in the banks OF
the Thames or the Seine. 1t does not,
however, follow that this identity of in.
plements implies that the same race OF
men ranged over this vast tract While
this may be left an open question, IT Ger.
tainly indicates primeval condition o
savagery, from which mankind has en-
erged in the long ages that separate il
from our own time. We may also infer
from his wide range that the river-drif)
hunter assuming that mankind sprang
from one centre) inhabited the earth fol
a long time, and that his dispesral took
place before the glacical submergence
and the lowering of the temperature in
northern Europe, Asia. and America
It is not reasonable to suppose that 'e
Straits of Behring could have offered q
free passage either to the river-drif,
man migrating from Asia t. America, OF
to the American animals from America
to Europe, while there was great bar
rier of ice or of sea, or of both, in the
high northern latitudes.
1t will naturally be asked who and
what was the rival-drift hunter. The
question can only he partially answered
in the present stage of the inquiry. The
few fragments of human bones. beyond
doubt associated with the implements,
are too imperfect to offer any evidence
as to race. They, however, point ou!
Enthusiastically that he was a man, and