28 On Elephantine Bones. 



veral centuries have elapsed since this vast animal was a 

 common inhabitant of the forests or marshes of this con- 

 tinent ; for none of the earliest visitors of America (if we 

 except some idle travellers, by no means studious of the 

 truth) pretend to have seen a quadruped, in any respect, 

 allied to the elephant of the New-World. (See Note 2.) 

 Neither do I learn, that they received, from the native 

 inhabitants, any traditional information relative to the 

 recent existence of such an animal. Now more than 

 three centuries have elapsed since the discovery of 

 the New- World by Columbus and Vespucci. Above 

 two centuries and a half have elapsed since Spanish 

 armies, in pursuit of gold, rambled over immense por- 

 tions of the country now called Georgia, and over the 

 two Floridas, on both sides of the Missisippi ; and it is 

 almost two centuries since the English first visited Vir- 

 ginia, and even founded colonies in that country. Nor 

 were the visits of the English, at this early period, con- 

 fined to the maritime, or most eastern, part of the coun- 

 try. The}' often penetrated as far as the first and se- 

 cond ranges of mountains, and explored those veiy 

 tracts of country in which the bones of the Mammoth 

 (as well as those of the Megatherium) have been recently 

 found. But they saw no living representatives of the 

 vestiges of either of these animals. Upon the whole, I 

 think wc proceed upon a pretty solid foundation when 

 we assert, that almost the entire race of the Mammoth 

 has been extinct for much more than three hundred 

 years. It is, indeed, highly probable, that a icw indi- 

 viduals of the species may have existed for many years, 

 perhaps a century, or double this term of time, after th* 

 greater part of the species had disappeared. It is even 



