NOVEMBER. 283 



just where you happen to be ; it is everywhere else, except 

 directly overhead, and disappears as promptly as you 

 change your own position. Again, it is delightfully rest- 

 less, outwriggling any child in church, so I am told. No 

 dancer has such nimble legs. From sunrise to sunset it 

 waltzes with the distant tree-tops, while the trees near 

 where I am standing remain, like myself, a quiet specta- 

 tor. But when I run across the pasture meadow, the trees 

 have changed places those that were dancing are now 

 sedate spectators. 



But no one should stand during Indian summer, al- 

 though it is not a season of activity. I compromised the 

 matter by taking my boat and rowing down Crosswicks 

 Creek from the draw-bridge to the Delaware four miles 

 or more of a most crooked course; here, between wide 

 meadows but a foot or two above high tide, and there, at 

 the foot of a wooded bluff, where the current is swifter 

 and ripples over shallows studded with pebbles, mussels, 

 and, strange to say, even to this day, stone implements 

 fashioned by prehistoric men. The vicissitudes of centu- 

 ries, one would think, should have buried them before 

 this. But the floods divide their favors, and where they 

 cover here, they expose elsewhere. For how long 

 must this valley have been inhabited, so thickly studded 

 is the meadow mud with weapons of rude workmanship ! 

 Yet not here does the story of man's occupancy of Amer- 

 ica open. There is an earlier and even more striking 

 chapter. 



The suggestion that absolutely primitive man ever ex- 

 isted in America has been and still is vehemently denied ; 

 but it is cheering to know that gradually his presence in 

 an earlier geological epoch is being admitted. Why so 

 cautiously admitted, though, is not quite clear. Still it is 

 something gained to have him in the probability stage, in 

 a new school-book. 



