AMERICAN MASTODON. 207 



tered except the big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, 

 sliook them off as they fell, but at length, one of them missing his 

 head, glanced on his side, wounding him sufficiently to make him 

 mad ; whereon springing round, he bounded over the Ohio at a leap, 

 then over the Wabash at another, the Illinois at a third, and a fourth 

 leap over the great lakes, where he is living at this day." 



A Mr. Stanley, who was taken prisoner by the Indians, and car- 

 ried beyond the western mountains to where a river runs westward, 

 says that these bones abound tliere, " and that the natives described 

 io him the animal to which these belonged, as still living in the 

 northern parts of their country." 



The following we extract from Dr. Kock's pamphlet on the Mis- 

 sourium* : "One man, in 1816, has asserted that his grandfather 

 told him he saw one of these animals in a mountain pass when he 

 was hunting ; and that on hearing its roar, which he compared to 

 thunder, the sight almost left his eyes, and that his heart became as 

 -mall as an infant's." 



Period of their existence. The opinion is a very prevalent one, 

 that these animals were antediluvian, and most persons reject with 

 a sneer liie idea that they have lived at a very recent period. But 

 the first opinion has no shadow of ground for belief, and all the 

 evidence seems to show that they have existed not many centuries 

 since. 



Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, reasons thus : " It may be 

 asked why I insert the mammoth as if it still existed ? I ask, in re- 

 turn, why I should omit it as if it did not exist ? The northern and 

 western parts still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and 

 undisturbed by us, or by others for us. He may as well exist there 

 now as he did formerly, Avhere we find his bones, &c." The same 

 reasoning which he used, will apply, with a diminished force it is 

 true, to our own times. There are still vast portions of this conti- 

 nent yet unexplored by the white man, and inhabited only by hos- 

 tile Indian tribes. Vast gorges of the mountains in the west might 



* Doct. Kock discovered, in 1840, the remains of the animal which he has called 

 Misso2(rium theristocaulodon, in the Osage country. The grounds upon which he has 

 given it a new name appear to be very questionable, and are by no means sufficient 

 to make it any thing more than the Mastodon, the remains of which are so often found 

 even as far west as Missouri, any more than to make the Hijdrarchos from the iZej*- 

 glodon described in our last number. 



