How long before the discovery of this vast region by Europeans, it had been in occupation by those who claimed to be its autochthones, we have no other knowledge than their own traditions of migration. But so far as arts are any evidence of national progress, they were then in their infancy. The region they occupied offered no advantages for the inauguration of a copper or bronze era, such as those of Lake Superior or the Southern Andes supplied to their ancient possessors. Of working in metals they knew nothing; and only supplemented their primitive implements, wrought in stone, flint, horn, bone, and wood, by barter with the European intruders. Nevertheless, for nearly two centuries, the Indians of the Five Nations, as they were called before the addition of the Tuscaroras, presented a sturdy and unbroken front to the encroachments alike of Dutch, French, and British colonists. But their hostility was concentrated in opposition to the French nation; and as the rival colonies of France and England were long nearly balanced, it is not unjustly affirmed by the historian of the Iroquois, that France owed the final overthrow of her magnificent schemes of colonisation in North America to their uncompromising antagonism. Among the Mexicans the arts of a true stone-period had been carried to the highest perfection, along with a development of those of their bronze age. On the northern frontier of Mexico, towards the head-waters of the Great Barauca, is the Cerro de Navajas, the “Hill of Knives,” where, before the conquest, obsidian was mined for manufacturing purposes: like the chert and hornstone of the Flint Ridge pits of Kentucky and Ohio. Examples of elaborately-worked obsidian and flint, and of polished implements and ornaments of stone, executed by Mexican artificers, rival the finest specimens recovered among the relics of Europe’s neolithic period. The Christy collection is specially rich in objects of this class. One flame-shaped arrow-head chipped with the nicest art, is evidently executed as a display of lapidary skill. Another fine spear-blade, made of a semi-opalescent chalcedony which occurs as concretions in the trachytic lavas of Mexico, measures eight inches long, and is supposed to have served as a state halberd, as it is much too delicate for actual warfare. But it is obvious that a finer material than usual frequently tempted the worker in flint or obsidian to an unwonted display of his art. In various private collections in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, I have seen choice specimens of spear and arrow-heads, and other objects, made of jasper, milky-quartz, and rock crystal; some of them wrought into fantastic or purely ornamental forms.