Their color was unique, and was imagined to resemble that of copper ; but further investigation showed that this color varied greatly. Some of the natives were found to be nearly as dark as negroes, while in other sections they were

almost as light as Caucasians. They spoke many hundred different languages, which showed striking analogies in their grammatical construction, with equally striking disparity in their vocabulary. The goal sought by these discoverers was India, and, imagining that they had found its outlying provinces, they called the inhabitants of the new land Indians.

It would be the merest conjecture to attempt to state how long man had occupied the American continent. Apart from the length of time required for producing new languages, or even dialects, and from all ethnological considerations, there are facts connected with his existence here that indicate a period of almost incalculable anti(iuity. Of the animals found in the New World, none were identical with those known in the Old, and in the vegetable kingdom the same rule held almost as absolutely. Maize and tobacco were cultivated in every portion of the country where the climate suited their requirements, while cotton was grown in a section necessarily more limited in area. We may reasonably suppose that man existed here for a long time before he discovered the litness of maize for food, and for a much longer period before he began its cultivation; and then it must have required centuries to introduce it to general cultivation over nearly a hundred degrees of latitude in the two continents. It is well known that plants change their character very slowly; but maize, tobacco and cotton had so long been subjected to the transforming influences of cultivation as to have lost all resemblance to their original forms, so that they could no longer be identified with the wild species.