386 DOUBTFUL INTELLIGENCE. 



huge footprints of animals he knew nothing of, and, on 

 one occasion, the largest print of the foot of man that he had 

 ever seen in his life, and that there were great bones there, 

 such as he had never seen before." I asked my in 

 formant if he could in no way guess the direction of this 

 cave, and told him that if he could guide me to it, on 

 arriving at the spot, and finding that it really existed, 

 and contained the things alluded to, I would not only go 

 on to the Rocky Mountains, but reward him handsomely 

 for having brought me to a site alleged to contain so many 

 curiosities. To this he replied, " That his friend was dead, 

 and had not described to him the exact position of the 

 cave, and indeed, at the time when in conversation with 

 the fugitive, he had taken very little heed of the matter." 

 Here then is intelligence which, if true, in all pro 

 bability would connect the mastodon with man ; and 

 though I am no believer in giant traces of human beings 

 antecedent to the one overwhelming flood, still, like a 

 hare's foot on the soft snow, if a man trod on yielding 

 clay, the impression made might assume an undue 

 magnitude. Of this alone I am sure, that the vast terri 

 tory of the United States holds 011 its surface, beneath 

 its caves, and in its womb, not only a wider field, but a 

 richer field for geological and antediluvian research than 

 men are sufficiently aware of ; and had I even now more 

 available time and means for travel, nothing would interest 

 me more than devoting some years to an attempt to reap, 

 in the young country, the harvest of splendid and even 

 awful research, the first seeds of which have been sown, 

 though they have not yet ripened into perfection, in the 

 old or mother country. By a further reference to " The 

 Transactions of the Academy of Science, at St Louis," 

 so kindly placed in my possession by Dr Pope, I find 



