Some of the pottery and wrought ornaments of the Mound-Builders is equal in finish and beauty to the finest manufactured by the ancient Peruvians. They constructed artificial ponds like the aguadas in Central America. They used sun-dried brick, especially at the South, where walls of this material have been discovered supporting some of the mounds and embankments. They manufactured cloth. But their intelligence, skill, and civilized ways are shown not only by their constructions and manufactures, but also by their mining works. Who can imagine the Iroquois or the Algonquins working the copper mines with such intelligence and skill, and such a combination of systematic and persistent industry! They had no tradition of such a condition of life, no trace of it. It is absurd to suppose a relationship, or a connection of any kind, between the original barbarism of these Indians and the civilization of the Mound-Builders. The two peoples were entirely distinct and separate from each other. If they really belonged to the same race, which is extremely doubtful, we must go back through unnumbered ages to find their common origin and the date of their separation. BRERETON’S STORY. Those who seek to identify the Mound-Builders with the barbarous Indians find nothing that will support their hypothesis. Nevertheless, some of them have tried very strangely to give it aid by one or two quotations from early voyagers to America. The most important are taken from Brereton’s account of Gosnold’s voyage in 1602. The following occurred on the coast of Maine: “Eight Indians, in a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle, came boldly aboard us, one of them appareled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge, made after our sea fashion, hose and shoes on his feet: all the rest (saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were naked.” It is known that the Basques were accustomed to send fishing vessels to the northeastern coast of America long before this continent was discovered by Columbus. They continued to do this after the discovery. These Indians had evidently become well acquainted with the Basques, and, therefore, did not fear to approach Gosnold’s ship. Probably some of them had been employed on board Basque fishing vessels. Certainly their boat and apparel came from the Basque fishermen, and did not show them to be Mound-Builders. Of the Indians on the coast of Massachusetts, Brereton says: