No. 112.J 59 



and to have been again submerged, ( the tracks remaining uneffaeed until 

 gradually covered by other beds of limestone ), how can we even conjec- 

 ture that these prints were impressed on the nascent rock ? 



" No remains of man or his work have ever yet been found, except in 

 the most recent deposits. Yet the limestone composing our slab is of im- 

 mense antiquity ; anterior, even to the coal formation. Between this 

 ancient limestone and the recent one of Gruadaloupe, as well as all other 

 rocks in which have been detected any traces of man or his handicraft, 

 there intervene six great geological formations : the coal measures, the 

 new red sandstone, the lias and oolite, the chalk, tertiary, and the dilu- 

 vium. These deposits form a geological series commonly three or four 

 thousand feet in thickness, and embrace six vast and strongly marked 

 epochs, during each of which, distinct races of animals have successively 

 arisen, existed, and become extinct. The time necessary to these changes 

 we can hardly conceive, much less calculate. Add the supposition usually 

 entertained by geologists (based on the gigantic and ultra-tropical vege- 

 table growth necessary to produce the superincumbent beds of coal), that 

 the temperature of the globe and its atmosphere during the deposition 

 of these secondary formations was unfit for animals with lungs, and the 

 idea of a human fossil existing in ancient limestone must appear at vari- 

 ance with the best ascertained facts which the industry of the modern 

 geologist has supplied to us, and with the most legitimate inferences to 

 be deduced therefrom. Nothing less than some fossil phenomenon of a 

 character so uneqivocal that its origin admits of but one explanation, 

 ought, under these manifold difficulties and improbabilities, to win our 

 confidence or command our belief. 



"The slab which is the subject of these enquiries was quarried, it will 

 be recollected, from a ledge of rock at a point on the very ec^ge of the 

 stream when at its lowest stage. The present site of St. Louis was a com- 

 mon gathering place of the neighboring Indians, as the adjacent mounds 

 abundantly testify. May we not, then, with some degree of confidence, 

 hazard the conjecture, that our impressions were an aboriginal record of 

 extreme low water, as observed by the Indian race, at their favorite 

 resort on the banks of the Father of Waters — their own unequalled and 

 magnificent Me-scha-si-piV^ 



