The Sioux, notwithstanding this good teaching of the very tradition which they still repeat to the stranger, have, by the right of the strongest, taken possession of the sacred neutral ground; and they, and all other tribes of the red race, are either being absorbed into the white population or exterminated by it. The development of the myth and the people of the myth has been therefrom alike arrested. But how clearly we see its growth and formation! To what a mystical faith that flesh-coloured quartz was conducting! And what mingling of the divine and human would have been suggested by the act recorded of the Great Spirit! If these Indian tribes had finally coalesced in one nation, the myth would have been exalted, and the Great Spirit would have taught them an eternal bond of peace and brotherhood. If civilisation and culture had still further advanced, this peace and brotherhood would have embraced all mankind, and assumed the form of the highest moral teaching. A considerable portion of Mr Wilson’s book is occupied with those ancient remains, whether in the valley of the Mississippi or in the forests of Central America, which speak of a civilisation, or at least of nations and of cities that had existed and left their ruins behind them, anterior to what we call the discovery of the New World. The subject is highly interesting, and it loses none of its interest in the hands of our author. He speaks very decidedly on the great antiquity of the mounds and the earthworks of the valley of the Mississippi; less decidedly on the antiquity of the monumental pillars and other architectural remains which were first brought to the knowledge of the English public through the travels of Mr Stephens in Central America. The work of Mr Squiers still contains, we believe, the fullest account we possess of those vast circular mounds, and other extraordinary earthworks, discovered within the territory of the United States. Both these writers, Mr Stephens and Mr Squiers, produced at the time of the publication of their several works a very vivid impression on the reading public of England. Both of them broke ground into quite new fields of inquiry, but both of them left the mind rather excited than informed. This was to be expected when the subject was of so novel and surprising a character. Mr Squiers saw evidences of serpent-worship and of other religious rites which his study of the antiquities of the Old World had made familiar to his imagination, in the circular mounds which he traced in the open field: and Mr Stephens, as he broke his way through the forests, saw the ruins of another Egypt stand before him.