[1.  Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, p. 71.]

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“met with a ship, which had on top of it the great mass of the hill, and did not agree in its make and appearance with our ships.”

Sir John Clerk describes a canoe found near Edinburgh, in 1726.  “The washings of the river Carron discovered a boat thirteen or fourteen feet under ground; it is thirty-six feet long and four and a half broad, all of one piece of oak.  There were several strata above it, such as loam, clay, shells, moss, sand, and gravel.”

Boucher de Perthes found remains of man thirty to forty feet below the surface of the earth.

In the following we have the evidence that the pre-glacial race was acquainted with the use of fire, and cooked their food: 

“In the construction of a canal between Stockholm and Gothenburg, it was necessary to cut through one of those hills called osars, or erratic blocks, which were deposited by the Drift ice during the glacial epoch.  Beneath an immense accumulation of osars, with shells and sand, there was discovered in the deepest layer of subsoil, at a depth of about sixty feet, a circular mass of stones, forming a hearth, in the middle of which there were wood-coals.  No other hand than that of man could have performed the work."[2]

In the State of Louisiana, on Petite Anse Island, remarkable discoveries have been made.[3]

At considerable depths below the surface of the earth, fifteen to twenty feet, immediately overlying the salt-rocks, and underneath what Dr. Foster believes to be the equivalent of the Drift in Europe, “associated with the bones of elephants and other huge extinct quadrupeds,” “incredible quantities of pottery were found”; in some

[1.  Tylor’s “Early Mankind,” p. 330.

2.  Maclean’s “Manual of Antiquity of Man,” p. 60; Buchner, p. 242.

3.  Foster’s “Prehistoric Races,” p. 56, etc.]

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cases these remains of pottery formed “veritable strata, three and six inches thick”; in many cases the bones of the mastodon were found above these strata of pottery.  Fragments of baskets and matting were also found.

Here we have evidence of the long-continued occupation of this spot by man prior to the Drift Age, and that the human family had progressed far enough to manufacture pottery, and weave baskets and matting.

The cave of Chaleux, Belgium, was buried by a mass of rubbish caused by the falling in of the roof, consequently preserving all its implements.  There were found the split bones of mammals, and the bones of birds and fishes.  There was an immense number of objects, chiefly manufactured from reindeer-horn, such as needles, arrow-heads, daggers, and hooks.  Besides these, there were ornaments made of shells, pieces of slate with engraved figures, mathematical lines, remains of very coarse pottery, hearthstones, ashes, charcoal, and last, but not least, thirty thousand worked flints mingled with the broken bones.  In the hearth, placed in the center of the cave, was discovered a stone, with certain but unintelligible signs engraved upon it.  M. Dupont also found about twenty pounds of the bones of the water-rat, either scorched or roasted.[1]