St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-01-08
NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

with introductions and explanatory notes-By
Charles Kendall Adams; cloth So, 10 mo-, 3
vols, PIP. 3iS, 30S, 3T5. New York and
London, q. p. Putnam's Sons, $500.
PREHISTORIC AMERICA--By the Marquis de
Nadaillac; translated by n. D'Anyers; edited
by W. II. Dali, with 219 illustrations; cloth
royal vo, PIP. 566, $500,
FIFTY YEARS OF LONDON LIFE; Memoirs OF
Man Of the Worldly Edmund Yates; cloth
IL mo-, PIP. 444. New York, Harper q
Brothers, $3.50.
PREHISTORIC AMERICA.
For the archeolcgist the American CONT
nent lay locked full of surprises. To his I'M
locking 1t has yielded everything. In the
rapid succession of volumes and reports we
remember nothing so at once elaborate, com
pact and available as the elegant volume now
before us. NJ. de Nadaillac has scheduled
his facts in perfect classification, and this
translated edition enjoys the careful editor
ship OF Mr. Dali, who has acted as break in
his notes on any efflorescence of statement
| into which the ardor of discoveries may have
led them. For example, the latter gentle
man has appended few concise notes per
contra on the discussion of the finding OF the
celebrated Calaveras Pliocene skull, and on
1t exhaustiyely and finally testifies. And yet
without its genuineness both writer and edi-
tor seem Obliged to agree that explorations
upon this American continent alone,
yielded the facts, beyond dispute. that the
human. type was not only contemporary with
the huge mastodon, tine megatherium, mega
lony and mylodon, sharing with those
mr. hic eff Ia yicfa
but that even in this horrid and heroic per-
iod, our race fashioned homes, houses, tools,
weapons, and what are to ours the rudimen-
tai amenities of civilization. On the banks
of this great Mississippi of ours especially
has science itself paused and gasped its
amazement. In the en- irons OF Natchez
was found q hnman skeleton under the
fourth forest, beneath what had been giant
cypress passed to petrifaction. In estimat-
ing the growth, forescence, decay, and petri-
faction OF this tree, a savant calculated that
those human bones had found that seputure
| IA, 44O years ago. Only little further down
the same river was revealed story too incred-
| ible for even fiction. 1t was rejected every
where, until another eXhumaton on the
some shores, but further up the stream, con-
frmed it. The story and the confirmation
were as follows: The bones Of a mastodon
were found buried in what had been the al.
luvial mud of thousands of years ago.
Around it, arrow aud lance heads, rounded
aud polished portions of rock, used as pro-
| jectiies, and what had been cnders of wood
were strewn, that is to say, human beings
had driven the great pachyderm To where his
weight had sunk him inextrcably in the
marsh. The great rocks they threw, the ar
rows they shot and the lances they projected
had failed to kill it. Finally the hunters had
| built fires around it and roasted it to death
| The contirmation-to be additionally corrob-
grated by the discoveries OF Aughey in Ne
| braska and Missouri-was come upon in Mis-
| souri,, in which case also the fossil bones of
mastadons, surrounded with arrow and lance
| heads shaped by human hands, were discov-
| cred, and to crown all, in salt mine on the
| island of Petit Anse, Louisiana. 4 mat, made
| oflaced reeds, such as could have been woven
| by human hands only Ot is now in the Wash
ington National museum) was found two
feet below a surface wherein mastOdon bones
were strcwn. Such then has been the record
| OF mans struggle for life against ting throes
and the monstrous creations of Nature. He
| has fought for his bread, not only with fell
lowmen, but with mastodons and megatheria,
with megalonyx and mylodontes. perhaps,
| for If the Caaveras skull, as to which arch9-
Ologists still desire to remain uncommitted
be authentic, with such terrific creatures rs
the IchthyosauruS, Plesiosaurus aud Ptero-
| dactyl.) Great mountains of gravel, whether
! from comets Gas the ingenious Mr.. DonnelIy
will have it,, or from the glaciers Of frozen
| pole, alternate fires and foods have scorehed
and deluged him. How dwarfed in comparison
| must have been the ordinary dread of com
mon mortality, or the greed of barter and en-
| ploymentl Who can wonder that brutality
and cruelty were mans first attributes or,
! (passng through these pages 10 the revolving
/ chapters which tell of human tOItures and
sacrifices to appease the problemstica gods
| who sent all this life OF horror aud panic), at
the deviltries already familiar in the Central
| American discoveries OF pre-history, re-
veaed in arch revividness by the
recent explorations OF VI. Charnay.
/ Aud, when we remember the poor aids be
! POSSESSED 10 agriculture, aud the poor en-
! couragcments to seeking his food amid the
forests, (he had not even dog for au ally,
! though he sometimes tanned the wolf or
| coyote) even his eanuibalism can be forgiven
| him, and the traces of cooking his eaptives
! found Enthusiastically in the 'kitchen mid
/ deus" or refuse heaps OF prehistoric Amer
/ lea. Aud yet we must believe that in the
midst of all this, the prehistoric man found
| time for the arts Of peace. He fashioned
pots and kettles to cook and preserve his food.
/ He mace urns for the ashes of his kindred,
aud ornaments for his women; and he wove
! textile fabrics 10 palliate attacks Of cold and
| rain and all climatic enemies as we'll Surely
the excltements of fiction fail capitally before
such story as these records write-such as
man himself has written waiting for his kind
| in the ten thousandth cycle after him TO dig
up and write in books.
! Nav our prehistoric kind even cultivated the
ameIiorative arts Of surgery. For among
these his bones which he has left fossilized
for us, have been found those meuded, or
cut of by the saws OF stone. Aad even
skulls that have been trepanned, show that
/ the abandonment OF disordered aud disabled
persons, was a later rather than an early
| barbarism Of the race.
Such are a few OF the reflections with which
we turn the pages OF this superb volume,
/ originally published by the Marquis de Ma
/ daillac, in LSs2, and now, by his permission,
revised and modified by the American edi-
\ tor 10 bring It into harmony With the best
results OF recent investigation and the con-
/ illusions OF the best authorities on the ar
/ chaology OF the United States aud the Amer
! icas VI de Nsdaillac travels minutely and