THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



And yet as the eye goes over this ancient evi- 

 dence of life, that Hfe that has turned to stone, 

 there suddenly appears upon this stone a mys- 

 terious writing, a strange form: the signature 

 of a second life. The toothed edge that has cut 

 my hand is no natural fracture. This stone 

 here on the floor of the cave strata has not sim- 

 ply been washed down from its natural rock, it 

 has been carefully worked out, it has been pur- 

 posely formed into a sort of rough knife. Some 

 hand must have assisted here. Whose hand.'^ 

 Even the fractured places are browned with 

 age. If the stone itself is originally three mil- 

 lion years old even this work is no longer young, 

 but how old can it be? 



In the flickering glow of the lamp, the glance 

 goes over the wall seeking a spot from whence 

 the flint was broken out. Then there appears 

 something strange before us. On the smooth 

 surface something is painted like a giant figure, 

 an animal picture six feet high. The sketch is 

 scratched deep into the rock and then painted 

 out with manganese black and its details 

 printed with brownish ochre. It is the sketch 

 of a long haired elephant with giant tusks. It 

 is an elephant of a primitive world such as has 

 not existed upon this earth for a long period. 

 Its primitive world, to be sure, does not reach 

 back to the dragon days of the dinosaur, but 

 it reaches much further back than any of our 

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