FAEQUHAESON ON INSCRIBED TABLETS. 113 



animals which had been created ; that the Great Man above, looking 

 down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, de- 

 scended, seated himself on a neighboring monntain, on a rock, of which 

 his seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and hnrled his bolts 

 among them till the whole were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, 

 presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell, but 

 missing one at last, it wounded him in the side, whereupon, springing 

 round, he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and 

 finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day." 



Mr. Jefferson* also states that, " a Mr. Stanley, taken prisoner near 

 the mouth of the Tennessee, relates that after being transferred through 

 several tribes, from one to another, he was at length carried over the 

 mountains west of the Missouri to a river which runs westwardly, that 

 there these bones (tusks, grinders and big bones) abounded, and that the 

 natives described to him the animal to which they belonged as still exist- 

 ing in the northern part of their country, from which description he judged 

 it to be an elephant." 



A recent writer in a newspaper! thus speaks of the Big Bone Lick : 

 After mentioning the fact that when first discovered in 1773, mastodon 

 bones were in great abundance on the surface of the ground, he contin- 

 ues : " This fact affords a key to the living age of these extinct animals 

 that has ever be6n a matter of conjecture with the scientific world. 

 That bones on the surface would not last a hundred years, probably not 

 more than forty or fifty." He then adds : " So that this key of the Big 

 Bone Lick (never before or elsewhere found) unlocks the mystery, and 

 shows to a certainty that these now extinct giants might have been seen 

 stalking through the forests like moving mountains, with their fearfui 

 tusks, glaring eyes, and heads of a thousand pounds, but a short time be- 

 fore the discovery of their remains.'''' 



The next link in the chain of our evidence is afforded by the narrative 

 of Dr. Koch, who, in a pamphlet published in St. Louis, in 1840, stated 

 that he had found the remains of a mastodon, in 1838, which had evi- 

 dently been destroyed by the hands of man. This premature statement 

 of a fact was received with ridicule and scorn, and his reputation, so far 

 as veracity is concerned, remained under a cloud during the rest of his 

 life. This statement was also published in the Proceedings of the St. 

 Louis Academy for 1857, from which it has been repeatedly quoted by 

 various writers. 



By good fortune, and through the kindness of our associate, Mr. Les- 

 lie, I am in possession of the original pamphlet of Dr. Koch, published in 

 1840, in St. Louis, while he was exhibiting in that city the skeleton of 

 another mastodon, being the one now in the British Museum. As it is 

 important, in such cases, to have the exact words of an original 

 explorer, I will quote him at some length. After stating how a farmer 

 in Gasconade County, Missouri, in cleaning out a spring, discovered the 



*Xotes on Virginia. 

 fLouisville Courier-Journal. 



[Proc. D. A. N. S. Vol. II.] 16 [April, 1S77.] 



