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north, once roȧmed as far south as Kentucky. The monkey, which is now found in South America, was once an inhabitant of North America also. The rhi noceros is now found only in Asia and Africa; but sev eral 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

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that their race must have existed on the soil of North

America for thousands of years. Whether men lived at the same time with them on the American Continent, we do not know with certainty: yet there can be little doubt that it was so. In France there have been found rude drawings of the mammoth, made by men on ivory and slate, and mingled with remains of extinct animals in caves. In America no such positive proofs have been discovered; but human bones and flint implements have been found mingled with these animal remains. It is very possible that the mammoth and the mastodon were gradually destroyed by men. In Southern Africa all the men of a village go out to hunt an elephant; and, in spite of his great size, they kill him with bows and arrows. So it is possible that the flint implements found with the bones of these larger quadrupeds may be the very knives and arrow-heads that killed them; and perhaps this is all that ever will be known of the way in which that mighty race disappeared from the surface of the earth. But, at any rate, the mastodons and mammoths perished at last; and the men and women who had looked on them passed away likewise, leaving only obscure and scattered memorials of themselves.

CHAPTER II.

A

THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

FTER the last mammoth was slain, it is very

probable that many centuries passed before the Mound-Builders came to occupy the soil where these animals had been. The Mound-Builders were a race of men who never saw the mammoth, we may be very sure; or else they would have carved or painted its likeness, as they did those of the birds and beasts they knew. But, though they made pictures of these creatures, they unfortunately did not make equally distinct pictures of themselves; so

that we do not know what they looked like; and, as they wrote no books, we do not know what language they spoke. All that we know of them is from the wonderful works of industry and skill that they left behind, and especially from certain great mounds of earth they built. It is from these great works

that they derive their name.

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THE SERPENT MOUND.

One of the most remarkable of these mounds is to

In some

be seen in Adams County, Ohio. It represents an immense snake a thousand feet long, and five feet thick, lying along a bluff that rises above a stream. There you can trace all the curves and outlines of the snake, ending in a tail with a triple coil. In the open mouth, something in the shape of an egg seems to be held; and this egg-shaped mound is one hundred and sixty feet long. This shows on what a vast scale these earth-works are constructed. Sometimes they are shaped like animals, sometimes like men. places there are fortifications, often enclosing one or two acres of ground, sometimes even four hundred acres. Sometimes these earth-works have from fourteen to sixteen miles of embankment. In other places, there are many small mounds, arranged in a straight line, at distances nearly equal, and extending for many miles. These are supposed to have been used for sending signals from station to station across the country. Then, in other places, there are single mounds, sometimes sixty feet high, sometimes ninety, with steps cut in the earth upon one side, leading up to the top, which is flat, and sometimes includes from one to five acres of ground.

These mounds are scattered all down the valley of the Mississippi, and along many of its tributary streams. There are thousands of them, large or small, within the single State of Ohio. They are not made of earth alone, for some of them show brick-work and stone-work here and there, though earth is always the chicf material. Some of them have chambers within, and the remains of wooden walls; and sometimes charred wood is found on top, as if fires had been kindled there. This

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