WHAT PICK AND SHOVEL REVEAL 24! 



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. 



