weight of it in a single house. Oviedo says the same of Hayti, and, at the discovery of Guadaloupe, the same year, cotton thread in skeins was found everywhere, and looms wherewith to weave it. There, as well as at Hayti and Cuba, the idols were made of cotton, and, in 1520, Fernando Magalhaens found the natives of Brazil using cotton for stuffing beds. The growth and manufacture of cotton, which were the first things brought to the notice of Columbus in the “West Indies,” and which were soon afterwards found existing in various parts of South America, had apparently been handed down to those who practised them from a time far away in the past. The Eastern Hemisphere is popularly regarded, even at the present day, as possessing a monopoly of antiquity, or, at any rate, of ancient civilization. It is not difficult to understand the mental process by which this notion is produced. In the first place the mind is hardly prepared to receive the idea that the inhabitants of countries of the existence of which we have, comparatively, so recently become aware as the continent of America should have attained to a high degree of civilization long before the natives of Britain emerged from savage barbarism. This feeling found expression in the distinctive appellations given respectively to the two hemispheres, the “Old World” and the “New World.” Secondly, the only written historical records that have come down to us from the remote past relate to Europe, Asia, and Africa. But the oldest authentic history is only yesterday’s news in comparison with the age of the world, and that which was called “the New World” is as old as the rest of the globe, and, apparently, was populated at quite as early a period. For in Mexico and Central America are found unmistakable proofs of the greatness and culture of former dwellers in the land. Immense piles of cyclopean masonry, of inconceivable grandeur, and incalculable antiquity; mounds and pyramids as massive as those of Egypt, huge reservoirs for water, aqueducts, ruins of public buildings, temples and palaces, tell of a powerful and wealthy nation, skilled in engineering and other sciences, and in all the important arts of civilized life. These were followed by successive races, differing from each other in habits, laws, arts, manufactures and religious worship. But all have passed away and out of memory as completely as if they had never been. We know nothing of their wars or dynasties, their prosperity or decay. Their works are their sole history. Only their ruined monuments remain to show that they once existed; and these are sometimes found in forest solitudes so far from the habitations of those who now occupy their territories, that the traveller who unexpectedly comes upon them is startled, like Crusoe by the foot-print, to find that man has been there.