So long as the American continent lay half revealed in its vague obscurity, as a new world lying beyond the Atlantic, and wholly apart from the old, it seemed the fitting site for imaginary Vinlands, Utopias, Summer Islands, and earthly paradises of all sorts: the scenes of a realised perfectibility beyond the reach of Europe “in her decay.” Nor was the refined metaphysical idealist the latest dreamer of such dreams. In our own century, Southey, Coleridge, and the little band of Bristol enthusiasts who planned their grand pantisocratic scheme of intellectual communism, created for themselves, with like fertile fancy, a Utopia of their own, “where Susquehana pours his untamed stream”; and many a later dreamer has striven after like ideal perfectibility in “peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.” ----- [4] Montgomery, James, _Greenland_, Canto IV. [5] _Mem. des Antiq. du Nord_, N.S., 1888, p. 341. [6] _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, p. 6. [7] _The Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated from the earliest records, by Arthur Middleton Reeves. [8] _Vide_ Dr. Brinton, _Races and Peoples_, p. 215 note. [9] Arthur Middleton Reeves, _Finding of Wineland the Good_, p. 28. III TRADE AND COMMERCE IN THE STONE AGE THE term “Stone Period” or “Stone Age” was suggested in the early years of the present century by the antiquaries of Denmark as the fitting designation of that primitive era in western Europe—with its corresponding stage among diverse peoples in widely severed regions and ages,—when the use of metals was unknown. That there was a period in the history of the human race, before its Tubal-cains, Vulcans, Vœlands, or other Smith-gods appeared, when man depended on stone, bone, ivory, shells, and wood, for the raw material out of which to manufacture his implements and weapons, is now universally admitted; and is confirmed by the abundant disclosures of the drift and the caves. The simple, yet highly suggestive classification, due to Thomsen of Copenhagen, was the first scientific recognition of the fact, now established by evidence derived from periods of vastly greater antiquity than the Neolithic age of Denmark. The accumulated experience of many generations was required before men mastered the useful service of fire in the smelting of ores and the casting of metals. Nevertheless it seems probable that the knowledge of fire, and its useful service on the domestic hearth, are coeval with the existence of man as a rational being. The evidence of its practical application to the requirements for warmth and cooking carry us back to the age of cave implements, including some among the earliest known examples of man’s tool-making industry. In connection with this subject, Sir John Evans draws attention to some curious indications of the antiquity of the use of flint by the