GENERAL INTRODUCTORY HISTORY.
AMERICA ANTERIOR TO COLUMBUS.
Up to the close of the fifteenth century the vast continent of America was wholly unknown to European nations. How painful is the reflection, that previous to the discovery by Columbus, this great Western World is destitute of history or chronology! That it was inhabited centuries ago, by a people far superior to the uncivilized Red Man, found here by the Europeans, the evidences are too strong to admit the shadow of a doubt. We trace them in their vast and mysterious monumental remains, stretching from the far North to the extreme South; from the Atlantic on the East to the Pacific on the West.
But who were they? Whence came and whither went that race? Contemporary history furnishes no aid, for they were isolated from all the world beside. Alas, they have faded from the earth without leaving a vestige of their history behind the remembrance of their deeds lives not even in tradition nor legendary song. One by one, they have, as a nation, risen, flourished and disappeared, beyond the remotest memory of man, with all their greatness, their glory