198 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



golden wheat, the thronging population — these all were 

 scenes and objects still shut up in the silence and night 

 of the far-distant future. An intelligent being may have 

 stood on the bank of the river, and pictured to himself the 

 shifting scenes of the next half million of years, as we now 

 portray to imagination the expansion of American civili- 

 zation, and its destined continental grasp of empire a hun- 

 dred years hence ; but no intelligent hand impressed its in- 

 fluence upon the features fashioned by Nature. An occa- 

 sional voice of monstrous Deinosaur broke the dreadful 

 silence of the broad continent. No song of bird was heard 

 in the grove, and rarely the hum of insect in the air. Bland 

 as the breezes were, and seductive the climate, it was not a 

 fit place for man to be in. Frogs and salamanders must 

 be his pets — lizards and crocodiles his domestic animals. 

 Providence reserved him for a more finished condition of 

 the world. 



