160 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



was miles farther out to sea than it is to-day. Here it 

 was confronted by the human savage, in whom it found 

 more than its match ; for before this autochthonic Nim- 

 rod behemoth melted away." 



Here we have not only the truth, but have it in a nut- 

 shell ; something refreshing in these days of prolixity. 

 I have but one criticism to offer concerning these ad- 

 mirable sentences. If by " autochthonic Nimrod " our 

 author refers to that primitive man of the great ice age — 

 palaeolithic man — the ancestor of the Eskimo, who also 

 antedated the Indian here, and supposes that the mas- 

 todon died out with these earlier folks, then I dissent. 

 If the last mastodon in New Jersey died by the hand of 

 man, it was the hand of a Delaware Indian that slew 

 him ; if he sank helplessly in some quicksand, while 

 wandering over these meadows, then these later Ind- 

 ians knew it well, and told of the unhappy fate of the 

 lonely beast, generation unto generation. Certainly not 

 a score of centuries have passed since the shrill trumpet- 

 ing of the mastodon awoke the echoes of our primeval 

 woods. 



Scarcely a rod from my neighbor's corduroy road, 

 over which, in July, the hay-laden wagons creak omi- 

 nously, is an ugly area of quicksand. 



"When Mink, a locally celebrated duck-shooter of the 

 last century, got caught in it, he remarked, as soon as 

 extricated, " The Lord left the materials of a good coun- 

 try about here and forgot 'em, so the devil did the mix- 

 in'." This covers the ground completely — I am glad the 

 quicksands do not — for good in their way as are sand 



