upper frontier of Honduras, chiefly on the lowlands, and probably also on lands now beneath the ocean. [Illustration: PRINCIPAL KNOWN RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA Prepared by M. H. Saville ] [Illustration: NECKLACE OF DRIED HUMAN FINGERS OBTAINED ON BATTLEFIELD OF WOUNDED-KNEE BY CAPTAIN BOURKE] [Illustration: PRINCIPAL KNOWN RUINS OF MEXICO Prepared by M. H. Saville ] In North America, south of latitude 23, then, most of the tribes of the continent were crowded by the great cold, and here they developed their chief characteristics, so that by the time the ice began its last recession they had become a homogeneous people, with the greatest advancement and the greatest similarities in the region where the population had been densest, with a diminishing scale outward, those tribes farthest from the culture centre varying most from the highest culture attained. The tribe on the extreme edge was, and is now, represented by the Eskimo.[397] The development and the distribution of the arts were in the same order, and here apparently is the explanation of the superior excellence of Central-American arts, and the seeming derivation of all the arts on the continent from this centre. Finally the recession of the ice caused renewed trouble. The melting of it and the return thereby of the locked-up waters to the ocean caused a submergence of lowlands that had been made habitable by their withdrawal. There were floods and floods. Tribes were overwhelmed or were driven to higher ground. There was a renewed shifting of populations over the whole continent. Those which had been held back toward the highlands and toward the ice, accustomed to the cool airs and to a particular food, readily followed the retrogression of the ice, impelled always by pressure of the tribes farther south. They were inured to cold. The most southerly tribes became inured somewhat to heat, and clung to their lands, impelled also to do this by the pressure of wilder tribes recoiling from contact with still other tribes. But heat being debilitating, and especially so to the Amerind constitution, the Yucatec peoples, who were those who had attained the highest development, gradually degenerated under its influence, and before the voyage of Columbus whole cities were depopulated. Some held their own for a longer period, but were already on the way to decline when the Spaniards appeared. In some cases their towns were occupied by an inferior tribe of perhaps the same stock, or an inferior tribe dwelt around them and, not knowing the origin of the architectural works, attempted to account for them by fairy tales like the legend of the _Dwarf’s House_, which Stephens learned. The people nearest the ice front are still represented by the Eskimo, and their next neighbours, as of yore, are the Athapascans, and Algonquins, and so on down in zones more or less distinct, but considerably deranged by subsequent migrations, to the builders of the Yucatec ruins. The