CHAP. XXXL] FOSSIL 11UMAN BONE. 197 



the os innominatum. He felt persuaded that it had 

 been taken out of the clay underlying the loam, 

 in the rapine above alluded to, about six miles from 

 Natchez. I examined the perpendicular cliffs, which 

 bound a part of this water-course, where the loam, 

 unsolidified as it is, retains its vertically, and found 

 land-shells in great numbers at the depth of about 

 thirty feet from the top. I was informed that the 

 fossil remains of the mammoth (a name commonly 

 applied in the United States to the mastodon) had 

 been obtained, together with the bones of some 

 other extinct mammalia, from below these shells 

 in the undermined cliff. I could not ascertain, 

 however, that the human pelvis had been actually 

 dug out in the presence of a geologist, or any prac 

 tised observer, and its position unequivocally ascer 

 tained. Like most of the other fossils, it was, I 

 believe, picked up in the bed of the stream, which 

 would simply imply that it had been washed out of 

 the cliffs. But the evidence of the antiquity of the 

 bone depends entirely on the part of the precipice 

 from w r hich it was derived. It was stained black, as 

 if buried in a peaty or vegetable soil, and may have 

 been dislodged from some old Indian grave near the 

 top, in which case it may only have been five, ten, or 

 twenty centuries old ; whereas, if it was really found 

 in situ at the base of the precipice, its age would 

 more probably exceed 100,000 years, as I shall en 

 deavour to show in a subsequent chapter. Such a 

 position, in fact, if well authenticated, would prove 

 that man had lived in North America before the 

 last great revolution in the physical geography of 



