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قراءة كتاب Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 Volume 1, Number 12
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
at the entrance to this strange, impressive, awe-inspiring river—for the wind and wear of unnumbered centuries have left them cold and bare, soilless and treeless, save where some stunted shrub, with a single root, has spiked itself into a crevice, and there stands starved and dying, as it lives its withered life.
“As it is to-night to eye and ear, so was it centuries ago; and so the old Basque whalers saw it while yet the great continent to the west was a trackless wilderness from ocean to ocean and gulf to gulf. And Columbus and Jacques Cartier and Champlain were not, by five hundred years, yet born.
“The harbor of Tadousac is a basin shaped like a sickle. On the west the mountain wall of the Saguenay protects it. The eastern curve is sheltered by vast sand lanes, scoured from the sea bottom and whirled upward by some mighty eddy in geologic ages. To the north are mountains of stone, their gray surface flecked here and there by stunted fir and cedar or dwarfed birches. Between these mountains of rock and the water of the harbor or basin is a short, narrow plateau, lifted some fifty feet above the water line, every foot of which is historic to a degree. On no other bit of ground of equal size on the American continent has so much been done and suffered which can interest the curious, touch the sensibilities, or kindle the imagination and fan it into flame.
There is reason to think that before the Christ was born the old Iberian ships were here; and their descendants, the Basques, continued the commerce which their progenitors had established and which rendezvoused here 1,500 years after the Galilean name had conquered kingdoms and empires. The Norsemen were here, we know, a thousand years ago, and many a night the old sea kings of the north drank out of their mighty drinking horns good health to distant ones and honors to Thor and Odin. Then, late enough to have his coming known to letters, and hence recorded, Jacques Cartier came, himself a Breton, and hence cousin in blood to the Basque whalers, whom he found here engaged in a pursuit which their race had followed before Rome was founded or Greece was born, before Jerusalem was builded, or even Egypt, perhaps, planted as a colony. St. Augustine, Plymouth rock, Quebec—these are mushroom growths, creations of yesterday, traditionless, without a legend and without a fame, beside this harbor of Tadousac, whose history, along a thin but strong cord of sequence, can be traced backward for a thousand years, and whose connection with Europe is older than the name!
PSYCHOMETRY AND ARCHAEOLOGY.
Whether “the thin but strong cord” by which Mr. Murray pulls the old Iberians to these shores be mainly historical or imaginative, I have not attempted to decide; but as to the old races of Southern Europe there are relics already sufficient to evoke their history by psychometric exploration.
The Popular Science News of Boston gives a sketch of some old relics from “La Nature” which I quote as follows:
“Recent explorations in Spain by two Belgian scientists, the Messrs. Siret, have resulted in some very interesting discoveries. Relics of a prehistoric race have been found in great abundance, ranging from the stone age to that of bronze and metals. These people buried their dead not only in stone graves or cells, but also in great jars of burnt clay, accompanied by pieces of pottery and other articles of use and value. This form of jar-burial is very widespread, and examples have been found from Japan to Peru. These relics are supposed to belong to that ancient race which lived in Europe previous to the Aryan immigration, the various branches of which are known as Iberians, Pelasgians, Ligurians, etc., according to the country in which they lived.
“Several skeletons were found adorned with silver and gold ornaments. One of the most remarkable is illustrated here. It is a female skull encircled by a band of silver, to which is attached a thin plate of the same metal. It is not known whether it was originally worn in the position as when found, or, as is most likely, had been accidentally displaced after burial. This skull was found in a cave near the station of Fuente-Alamo, where gold and silver are found in small quantities in the soil; and it is quite possible that in those ancient times the mining of the precious metals was a regular occupation of the inhabitants.”
Psychometric Description.—Mrs. Buchanan, describing the subject from this engraving, without seeing it or knowing what it represented, spoke as follows:
“This is far away; it is remains of some kind; remains of a human being, of a very remote type of female. Her surroundings were very rude. She was of a race of strong animal instincts—a large people. She seems something like a squaw. (What of their habitations?) They were very rude, as much like caves as anything. I think they lived in caves and rocks. They hunted and fished. Their weapons were of stones, but they had some kind of metal which they could hammer out. They dried their food in the sun—fishes and meats. They had very little agriculture. They had a process for making things they wanted for domestic use, and for weapons, as well as stone implements. They may have used the precious metals, not as money but for ornaments. It was not a numerous race, did not propagate fast. They have all died out. There is no vestige of them on the earth. They were a brown, dark colored race. Their heads were low and faces large; jaws prominent.”
Evidently this is not the race of which Mr. Murray speaks—neither Iberian nor Basque.