YOUNG FOLKS' UNITED STATES. WHO CHAPTER I. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS. questions. HO were the very first men and women that Important ever trod the soil of North America? Of what race were they, of what color, of what size? and how did they look? History cannot answer these questions. Science can only say, "Perhaps we shall find out; but we do not yet know." the Conti We know already a good deal about the changes in Changes in form and appearance of the North American Continent nent. itself. We know that a large part of it was at one time covered with a thick coating of ice, a sort of vast glacier which several times stretched itself farther southward, as the climate grew colder, and then shrank to smaller size again, as the climate, during unknown ages, grew milder. We know that the whole surface of the continent has risen or sunk, irregularly, at various times; so that the sea once covered much that is now dry land. We know that plants and animals of species Extinct now unknown have existed in many parts of the continent. The reindeer, which is now found only in the far animals. Extinct animals Mammoth and mastodon. north, once roamed as far south as Kentucky. The monkey, which is now found in South America, was once an inhabitant of North America also. The rhinoceros is now found only in Asia and Africa; but several distinct species once existed in North America, one of these being as large as an elephant. There were, at least, five different species of camel, some of them reaching a very large size. Wild horses, or horselike animals, of at least thirty different species, have at different times galloped or grazed in North America, though the first European explorers did not find a single species surviving. Some of these had three toes on each foot, some had four, instead of the solid hoofs of our present horses; and there were cloven-footed animals no larger than squirrels; while others, again, were as large as elephants. There were also gigantic animals of the sloth family, and, in short, a great variety of quadrupeds now unknown. No written history tells of them; we do not know whether human eyes ever saw most of them: but there are the bones in the soil; and new explorations, especially in Colorado, are constantly bringing more and more species to the light. But most remarkable among all these fossil animals were two great quadrupeds akin to the elephant, and called the "mammoth" and the "mastodon." They once went trampling through the forests, tearing down the branches of trees for food; and they sometimes sank and died in the swamps, unable to move their huge weight out of the mire. They were ten or twelve feet high (taller than any living elephant); and their tusks have been found eleven feet long. We know their shape and size and appearance; and we know Man may have lived here with them. that their race must have existed on the soil of North |