THE MYSTERY OF AMERICA. Relics Left by Early Dwellers In that Country.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 250, 28 March 1888, Page 4

THE MYSTERY OF AMERICA. Relics Left by Early Dwellers In that Country.

Pkrhaps patriotism rather than good judgment is responsible for various recent declinations that the .study of American, archeology might be iniitful of more iiu poitant lesults than the search into the ancient liio of the Old World. In the nature ot things this cannot be true, of course. The nib of curly nations in the Old World is in its essence our own liie ; our history, our civilisation, our literature, our political institutions!, our 1 elisions spring trom it or are influenced by it, while between the pie&cnt and the past dwellers upon tins continent remains only the bond ot identity ot location. There ir> between us a crap which no quantity of knowledge can ever iill up. Vet though the past of this continent is a matter ot'ciu'ious interest rather than of personal importance, save a.-> it may bear upon the weighty problem of ulie unity of mankind, thcteaie within this study possibilities ot Knowledge which dazzle the imm.igmation, so many, &o vaiied, and withal Mi clusuc aio the. e\ idences to be found upoij e\eiy hand of other and better condiLioiia of human liie than that led by the aborigines we Know. Were the Indians the buildeib or the degeneiate son& ot the builder;* ot the mounds which dot the wholo Upper MisH^ippi Valley ? Who were the multitudinous and industrious people who out the wist .^ystoin ot irrigating- canals io be .>een in Mi».-ouii? Who woe the «-liH duellci.s and the pueblo buildcis 01 the ,Southue*t? Were they a race by thein,s ;nes ( or wheie they diivcn to the South, thcie to build the civilisation uhobe lemain.s we slill wonder over in Mexico and Cential America m i Was that civilisation A/.tee 01 Toltec, and who were tht; Toilers and who weie the Aztecs? Jfow i*« it thai their symbols and even their aroluteLtmc are seemingly touched by the influence oi the older woild, the western a- well a-> rhe eastern? >Vill the key to their writings ever be found, and whai will they reveal': The lost Atlantis, ahi-stoiy running back thousands ot yeai», or a comparatively recent migration from Asia .' The door of conjecture is wide, and it is surprising that so little has been done by us in any systematic and compieheiibive way to seek out the hidden mystery whose clues are so many. It is gratifying, however, to see the increase ot in'teiesb which is being manifested in this matter of recent years, and to note the invaluable work that has been done in Central America by C'harnay, iy being done in the Noi tli by such men ns Prot'e\&or Putnam of Harvaul and Rev. i >r_ I'eet, and in the south west by Frank Cubhing. The last-named gentleman— the Sehliemann of our Western world, as someone has aptly called him— has indeed quite bewildered the imagination by the extent of the discoveries he has made during the couise of the exploration which he is now carrying on in the Salt Kiver Valley of Arizona. He has, in fact, found no less thnn nineteen populous cities there, and a civilisation "older than the pyramids'' and of a wonderful development. One ot these cities, partly unearthed, is Imec miles wide, and contains many buildincs 300 feet square, and one nearly 500 feetlonir, with walls' seven feet thick. They und"erstood the art of irrigation better than do the farmers of to-day, and the valley X a network ot canals, iully three hundred miles of canal having been found out through earth and solid rock. There is evidence ' that the^e were maintained throughout a long period, and that a population of 250,000 dwelt on the plain oi Tempe alone, while there is the same sort of pvoot as that shown at Pompeii that this community of Pompeii was suddenly overthrown by a series of terrible earthquakes. i The haste with which these places weve left, the multitudinous implement*, of daily lite which were .suffered to remain behind, and the completeness with which even the skeletons of the victims of the disaster have been preserved through the ages by the superincumbent earth, open up possibilitiesof future disclosures which must delisht. every arcluoologieally inclined mind. 'J he work there begun should certainly be pursued diligently and systematically. The result may not be to tell us the full secret of the past, but it can hardly help telling us a good deal, which we can now only think of, of what the past was not.—" Providence Journal."