WHAT PICK AND SHOVEL REVEAL 241 



had decked their persons. With these had been set lumps of 

 iron peroxide, the red stains of which appeared on skulls and 

 bones, so that they might make a fitting show in the under 

 world. 



Colors, too, to paint his body, 



Place within his hand, 

 That he glisten, bright and ruddy, 

 In the Spirit-Land. 5 



Idolatry? Presumably so, let us say, though 

 what certainty have we of the archeologist s in 

 terpretation? But none the less there is here ad 

 mittedly a concept of religious duties and of a 

 future life. Religiously these men may have 

 been incomparably superior to thousands of sup 

 posed gentlemen and ladies who today grace the 

 salons of the social world, but whose lives are 

 often without a thought of God, or even of any 

 higher or nobler things than personal gain and 

 personal ambition. Spiritually they may belong 

 to a stage far below the Cro-Magnon type. But 

 idolatry itself, we contend, was but a degradation 

 of that true belief which the first man and woman 

 transmitted to the human race, which was pre 

 served through certain channels to the days of 

 Abraham, and which in countless races and tribes 

 was gradually perverted and mingled with false 

 doctrines and superstition, while the knowledge of 

 a Supreme Being nevertheless remained every 

 where, though confused more and more with 

 polytheistic notions. The similarity of primitive 



6 1 bid., p. 430. 



