EXHUMING OF FIRST AMERICAN MASTODON 651 



•of water from copious springs, bursting from the bottom, rose upon tlie men 

 tliiit it required several score of hands "to lade it out with milk-pails, buckets, 

 and bowls." After the fourth day the attempt was given up, and it was in 

 this colidition when Peale arrived upon the scene, in 1801. Peale purchased 

 the excavated bones from the farmer for a smail sum, reenforced by the judi- 

 cious gift of gowns to his wife and daughter and a gun to his son. 



All necessary articles for the excavation had been provided from New 

 York — pumps, ropes, pulleys, etcetera — and after weeks of close labor, a mill- 

 Avright fashioned the machiuery and completed a large scaffold and a wheel 

 20 feet in diameter, wide enough for three or four men to walli abreast in, 

 to supply tread power. A rope around this turned a spindle, which \vorked a 

 chain of buckets. The water was raised and emptied into a trough and con- 

 veyed into a basin a short distance away. A ship's pump assisted the work, 

 and later a pair of barrels, raised liy a crane, removed the mud. 



Several weeks of unremitting work, during which bank after bank fell in, 

 resulted in the discovery of but a few additional bones, while the 25 hands 

 which Peale employed at high wages were kept at their task partly by their 

 eagerness to uncoverthe head and under jaw. 



Finally the work was relinquished, but again taken up 20 miles west of the 

 Hudson, where the particular bones desired were found in another mastodon, 

 together with others sufficient to fashion two skeletons. One was exhibited 

 in Peale's museum, which he had recently opened in Philadelphia and where 

 lie gave lectures upon natural history. Family tradition recites that after 

 the skeleton was mounted in the Philadelphia museum a celebration and 

 dinner were given beneath it. 



The other was exhibited liy his son Remln-andt in Baltimore and became 

 the nucleus of the "Peale museum" there, which he erected and which bears 

 upon its front to this day the faded legend : 



"Erected by Rembrandt Peale. 



"Baltimore Museum, 1817-1830 



"City Hall, 1830" 



Both the Philadelphia and the Baltimore museums, the former started in 

 1802 and the latter about 1813, appear to have resulted from the Newburg 

 finds ; and. since these were the first public natural history museums in 

 America, must we not credit the Peales as well with the nestorship of American 

 public museums? 



The scope of their interest along this line is suggested by another family 

 tradition,* which relates that while the elder Peale and Baron von Humboldt 

 were being entertained at a formal "three o'clock dinner" Iiy President Monroe, 

 the guests improved this opportunity by asking the Presidr-nt to try to induce 

 Congress to establish a National museum, and that Peale returned from the 

 interview much elated by the belief that some action would shortly be taken. 



Tradition also adds that Peale was first induced to undertake the exhuming 

 of the mastodon by Von Humboldt, who had visited this country before and 

 been entertained by the artist. 



* This is stated in C. W. Peale's diary, not tradition. 



