of American
> than those
doubled the
s 80 zealously
ge to elapse
he discovery
its colonisa-
hin 32 years
me time as
sh monarchy,
w character,
Hollanders.
wrew off the
tch settlers.
ter retarded
y after their
1 lost nearly
ention more
ne the most
outh. of the
of the House
it received,
has rendered
ishing power
s of the St
id rather to
bed colonies,
d A. chiefly
ngland and
but an inert
indeed, but
The govern-
lual subject
nor Canada
n corrobora-
and official
ge, rewards
ents of three
s on a lot of
O acres) was
762, France
ndirect con-
>d Louisiana
nough, did
e, the sepa-
uccessful of
- last in the
mentioned.
- nothing of
- established
the crowns;
733.. With
on were, one
f civil and
er-country’s
affold, and
assachusetts
in 1623 and
Connecticut
was granted
obleman ; in
om the sec-
1653, North
ia; in 1664,
were taken
v 'was estab-
- granted to
be a proprie-
. In nearly
liberties for
tl
- republican
tment -of a
- colony was
1emselves,
AMERICA.
practically a state within itself ; and it is a sugges-
tive fact that the very earliest assertion of legislative
superiority on the part of the mother-country was 7
and 8 Will. ITI. ¢. 22, which, however, only operated
negatively by forbidding every colony to make laws
repugnant to those of England. With such aspir-
ations and such institutions, the enterprising inha-
bitants of a new home could not fail to prosper;
while their prosperity was rendered more solid and
permanent by the comparative poverty of a region
where steady industry, in agriculture or in the
fisheries, was, as it were, a necessary of life. Under
these circumstances, the germs of political independ-
ence were at work long before 1765; and it is not
merely a probability, but a fact, that the expulsion
of the dreaded power of France from Canada and
Louisiana, in 1762, was closely connected with the
troubles which so soon began. See AMERICA,
BrITisH.
The colonisation of the West Indies, Guiana
included, will be seen at a glance in the appended
table of American Gtovernments.
It may be added, in conclusion, that the whole of
A. is now in the hands of European races, excepting
only the aboriginal Araucania to the south of Chili,
and the African republic of Hayti, otherwise known
as Hispaniola or St Domingo, the oldest among the
colonies of Spain.
American Antiquities—The architectural remains,
to which we have already alluded in connection with
a general estimate of aboriginal civilisation, are to
e found in each of the grand divisions of the new
continent. To begin from the north. That portion
of the United States which lies between the Appa-
lachians and the Rocky Mountains, presents in three
groups at once the oldest and the rudest monuments
of bygone times: the first group extending from the
sources of the Alleghany to the waters of the Missouri;
he second occupying the Mississippi Valley, vaguely
so defined ; and the third stretching from South
Carolina to Texas. These several groups, apparently
with very little difference among themselves, consist
of numberless mounds, and circumvallations of earth
and stone—1500 of the latter, and 10,000 of the
former, being said to stud Ohio alone. The erections
themselves range from 5 to 30 feet in height; while
the areas enclosed—generally of some symmetrical
figure, such as circle or ellipse, rectangular parallelo-
gram or regular polygon—vary from twenty to forty
acres, though among a few of greater extent, one in
Arkansas is stated to embrace a square mile. The
circumvallations, moreover, seem generally to con-
tain the mounds; and sometimes a smaller circum-
vallation is surrounded by a larger one. Whether
these cologsal structures were intended for worship
or for defence, it is impossible to decide; more prob-
ably, however, they were of a military character,
provided, as they ordinarily were, with cisterns for
water. But, whatever their origin, they derive
interest from the analogous fact, that, within the
same territorial limits, have been dug up vases of
earthenware or copper in elegant forms, pipe-bowls
decorated with human heads of the type of the exist-
ing aborigines, or with those of birds, &c., domestic
utensils, personal ornaments, hatchets of stone, and,
lastly, weapons of copper or mica, or shell or obsidian.
—The architectural remains of Central and South A.
are at once of more modern origin and more elaborate
character, and may be roughly compared with the
cyclopean ruins in Italy and Greece. Uniformly in
he pyramidal style—a style likely enough to be
indigenous 'in a region of earthquakes—they are
composed of blocks generally huge, and sometimes
enormous ; those in the walls of Tiahuanaco in
Bolivia being equivalent to cubes of about 16 feet
each way. Between those of South A. and Central
A., however, there are diversities as well as resem-
blances. Those of South A., situated, as they are,
within the native limits of Peru, and referred, as
they must be, to its closing era under the Incas,
cannot reach back beyond the Spanish conquest more
than 300 or 400 years: the principal ruins are those
of Tiahuanaco, already mentioned; of a temple on
an island in Lake Titicaca ; of another edifice of the
kind at Pachacamac, not far from Lima; and of the
palaces and mausoleums of the royal race. Those
of Central A., again, are reckoned to be considerably
more ancient, reaching five or six centuries further
back, and being partly the work of the Aztecs,
whom the Spaniards conquered, and partly of the
Toltecs, whom the Aztecs had themselves supplanted.
Nor is the fact altogether without significance, that,
in the two more southerly divisions of the continent,
those mysterious records of the past are generally
superior in development in proportion as they are
anterior in age; those of Central A., as a whole,
surpassing those of South A.; and, again, within
Central A. itself, the earlier specimens of Oaxaca,-
Guatemala, and Yucatan, eclipsing the later ones of
Mexico Proper. While attempting, in the light of
these remains, to appreciate aboriginal civilisation,
we cannot fail to be struck rather with their magni-
Front and back of a stone idol found at Copan, in
Central America.
tude than with their beauty, rather with the evidence
of despotism in the ruler than with traces of skill in
the subject—Stonehenge affording us infinitely more
of a parallel than Windsor Castle or Westminster
Hall. Nor does the sculpture, so often subsidiary
to the architecture, lead to a more favourable infer-
ence, being generally rude and clumsy, and some-
times grotesque and hideous. The only safe conclu-
sion is this, that, in the new world as in the old,
there were different degrees of civilisation; some
of them - confessedly higher than one could have
expected in the utter absence of the useful metals,
and the almost utter absence of beasts of burden.
Nor has even this conclusion any necessary bearing
on the better organised communities at large. Stray
visitors of a higher type might have produced all the
phenomena—rvisitors precisely such as appear to have
figured in the traditions both of Mexico and Peru.
Geology.—The geology of the new world pzr&scn'ts
