Assuming the affinity thus based on a general likeness in cast and mould of speech to be well founded, there need be no surprise at the lack of any positive similarity in words or grammar; for, used only as a test of the intervening time since Basque and Red Indian parted, it points to representatives of a prehistoric race that occupied Europe before the advent of Celtic or other Aryan pioneer, long prior to the historic dawn. And if the intervening centuries between that undetermined date and the close of the fifteenth century, when intercourse was once more renewed between the Iberian peninsula and the transatlantic continent, sufficed for the evolution of all the classic, mediæval, and renaissance phases of civilisation in Europe, what was man doing through all those centuries in this New World? A period of time would appear to have transpired ample enough for the development of a native civilisation; but neither the languages nor the arts of the Indian nations found in occupation of the northern continent reveal traces of it; nor does archæology disclose to us evidence of civilised precursors. Whatever their origin may have been, the Red Indian appears to have remained for unnumbered centuries excluded by ocean barriers from all influence of the historic races. But on this very account an inquiry into the history of the nations of the American continent, in so far as this may be recoverable from archæological or other evidence, may simplify important ethnical problems, and contribute results of some value in reference to the condition and progress of primeval man elsewhere.