relics of these dropping successively to the bottom of the water, have become so confusedly mingled, that no definite conclusion can be reached, at least in regard to many of them, as to the time in which they were built or destroyed. Like villages on the land, their origins doubtless.date from different periods. Some of them clearly belong to the earlier times of the Romans, and some of them to the latter; those of Noville and Chevannes are referred by antiquarians to the sixth century of the Christian era.

The coins, medals, and articles of iron found, speak for themselves, and offer unquestionable evidence that they belong to a comparatively recent period, and one of an advanced state of art and civilization.

The cultivation of the cereals, and the presence of all the modern domestic animals, plainly point to a similar condition of things. The occupants of these Lakedwellings were no mere savages; as Oswald Heer informs us, they raised two distinct breeds of cattle, cultivated five kinds of wheat, and three kinds of barley; among them was the wheat commonly called Egyptian, a fact leading to the inference that the Lake-dwellers had either come originally from the south, or had intercourse with some southern people.

Even their stone implements imply acquaintance and intercourse with remote countries. The flint, of which they formed various articles, must have come from a considerable distance, probably from the south of France. And the jade, from which they made hatchets and wedges, is not to be found in Switzerland nor in any of

the adjoining parts of Europe. The amber, likewise, which has repeatedly been found, it is supposed must have been imported from the shores of the Baltic.—All these things seem to bring the earliest of the lake settlements within the pale of a comparatively modern civilization.

6

"These aboriginal Swiss," says Professor E. Fontaine, "certainly lived before the conquest of the Helvetii, or half a century prior to the Christian era; and they may possibly have been contemporary with the Poeonians of Lake Prasias, mentioned by Herodotus, who about 520 B. C. lived, he tells us, in houses which were built on a platform of wood supported by wooden stakes, while a narrow bridge, which could be withdrawn at pleasure, communicated with the shore.'"* Herodotus further informs us that these Poeonians preserved their independence during the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Xerxes by the aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings.

From all that has yet been discovered in connection with these pile habitations of the Swiss Lakes no proof can be derived of any very high antiquity,-certainly none that affects the chronology of Scripture history.

4. The Mississippi Discoveries.-The Valley and Delta of the "Great Father of Waters" have been a fertile field for theories. From time to time various strange. discoveries therein have been reported, and more than once the public have been startled by the learned calculations

*How the World was Peopled, p. 69.

sent forth of the vast antiquity of some of these; and by the sceptical they have been seized and hastily construed into evidence against the Bible account of the origin of the human race. To notice severally these remarkable discoveries, and the wild calculations based upon them, would be tedious and unnecessary. Our purpose will be fully answered by a reference to one or two of them, as this will sufficiently show what estimate should be set on the rest.

One instance of which we are about to speak was of so marked a character as to attract the attention of such a man as Sir Charles Lyell, and to secure a notice in his great work on the antiquity of Man. Speaking of the great Valley he says, "In several sections, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I observed erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried in strata at different heights, one over the other. I also remarked that many cypresses which had been cut through exhibited many hundreds of rings of annual growth, and it then struck me that nowhere in the world could the geologist enjoy a more favorable opportunity for estimating in years the duration of certain portions of the recent epoch." This statement is made with reference to and in connection with a discovery then recently made in an excavation at New Orleans, for certain gas-works. "In this excavation," he says, "at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface, beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon the other, the workmen found some charcoal and a human skeleton, the

cranium of which is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the Red Indian race. The chronological calculations of Dr. Dowler ascribe to this skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years." While Lyell refrains from expressing his opinion of this astounding calculation, he deems it of sufficient value to give it a place in his book. But to show how unreliable and baseless such a computation is, we need but state a few well-known facts.

In the lower part of its course, that is, below Cairo, the Mississippi flows through a low, flat, and recently formed alluvium, varying in width from twenty-five to fifty miles; in this it perpetually shifts its channel, deviating on this side or on that from ten to twenty miles in less than one century. In times of high water it undermines its banks, and often engulfs acres together of the forest or plantation that may lie along its flood. In this way, ancient mounds and modern graveyards are promiscuously swept away, whilst the forsaken portions of its bed, being composed of the richest soil, speedily send up rank vegetation which in the course of a few years obliterates every trace of the stream. Indeed, this work of destruction and renovation is accomplished so rapidly, that vessels now navigate its deepest current where forests grew or plantations flourished twenty years ago. When this river was surveyed by the United States government some fifty years since, all its islands were numbered from the confluence of the Missouri to the sea; but every season makes such revolutions, not only in the number but in the magnitude and situation of these islands, that this enumeration is now almost obso

lete. Sometimes large islands are entirely melted away; at other places they have attached themselves to the main shore, or, which is the more correct statement, the interval has been filled up by myriads of logs cemented together by mud and rubbish.

From these facts it is sufficiently evident that no reliable calculation can be made as to the age of any relic, whether of man or of beast or of vegetable growth, which may be found buried in such a loose and movable soil. The remains of trees that grew and of animals that lived in localities separated by hundreds of miles, or at periods divided by thousands of years, when swept down as far as New Orleans or the Delta, may be found lying side by side; or, even the more recent relic buried at the depth of a hundred feet, while the more ancient occupies a grave quite near the surface.

"The age of no fossil," says Professor E. Fontaine, "found in the alluvium of the present Delta of Louisiana can be determined. The average depth of the

river is about 100 feet for the lower 125 miles of its course, and its bottom current flows as swiftly as its surface, and the average velocity is about four miles per hour. Opposite New Orleans, the soundings for Harrison's Map of 1847, in the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, showed a depth of from 162 to 187 feet. Mr. Alfred Hennen, who had lived in the city sixty years, in 1867 told me that he recollected when the deep channel of the river flowed where Tchoupitoulas street is now built, in the heart of the business part of it, a quarter of a mile from the present shore. By undermining and