380 CONTINUATION OF REPLY. 



of the visible world, has been subject to vast eruptive 

 and chaotic influences. That which is now a valley, 

 through which I travelled in my way from Counsel Grove 

 to Fort Kiley, was once a river, as its alluvial bottom and 

 rocks on either side the little valley prove ; and, from the 

 existing state of storms and pervious nature of the alluvial 

 mould pervading a vast extent of the plains, rivers may be 

 said to have come and gone almost within the lives of men. 

 That currents of rivers shift in the most uncertain methods 

 and leave their beds to make new ones, I had a full opportu 

 nity of seeing from the deck of the steamers traversing that 

 most fickle and dangerous of all streams, the Missouri 

 river. Dr Kock says that the fire was chiefly beneath 

 the head of the animal, and that the head was nearly 

 consumed. Supposing the creature to have been stuck in 

 the mud, the head, which might have rested on dryland, 

 as well as from its position, would have been the only 

 portion of the body beneath which a fire could have been 

 placed ; but then the question occurs, was the ground dry 

 enough, a swamp as it must have been, to permit a wood 

 fire to have been lighted at the same time that the vast 

 creature was alive, and, by the mere moving of the head 

 from side to side capable of disturbing sticks or wood, put 

 in a position to catch fire through the rude attempts at 

 ignition within the power of savages ? Another doubt in 

 my mind also exists, and that is, with the stated amount 

 of wood ashes, would it have been within the power of 

 such a fire so to have consumed the immense mass of green 

 flesh and bones put but for a short time at its disposal ? 

 There is again another position in which the two facts of 

 the mastodon and the fire may be viewed. The bones of 

 the mastodon only might have been there when the fire 

 was lighted, and the Indians used them for fuel or as 



