68 IN WINTER. 



buffalo roamed over the Crosswicks meadows. 

 This is extremely improbable. Moose and rein- 

 deer bones have been found, it is true, and even 

 traces of the musk-ox, but all goes to show that 

 it was far longer ago than three centuries. That 

 there are traces, too, of man found associated 

 with them goes for nothing. Such association 

 does not bring the now arctic animals down to a 

 recent date in this river valley, but places man 

 in an indefinitely long ago. If there is any one 

 fact well established, it is the antiquity of man in 

 America, and those who, even in scientific jour- 

 nals, say the evidences so far are not trustworthy, 

 and all that, utter greater absurdities than the 

 old chronicler I have quoted. 



A word more. If the author quoted had in 

 mind such a winter as this, perhaps he can not 

 be held as intentionally wrong as to the climate ; 

 but why need he have exaggerated ? As if the 

 round of the seasons in Jersey could be better, 

 when they are as they should be ! The truth, 

 two hundred and odd years ago, would not have 

 frightened a would-be settler ; but such a winter 

 as this might. The present meteorological " flum- 

 mux," which plays the fool with all animate na- 

 ture, is what the old-time Indians called niske- 

 lan ugly weather ; and they gave it the proper 

 name. 



But hang the whole crew of historians and 



