CHARLES WILLSON PEALE. 
of porcelain teeth, not only for himself, but for his friends 
and others, at a time when no other person in the United 
States had succeeded in the attempt. 
About the period when the Museum was commenced, 
Loutherbourg in London had got up an exhibition of trans- 
parent paintings with moveable effects. A description of 
these excited an irresistible desire to effect the same pur- 
poses. Here was a vast field opened for his taste and in- 
vention; for his labour day and night, and his morning 
dreams. At length, the public in crowds witnessed, at the 
end of his long gallery of portraits, these magic pictures. 
A perspective view of Market street, gradually darkening 
into the gloom of night. The street lamps are successively 
lighted and sparkle in the diminishing perspective; the 
clouds disperse and the pale moon rises. Another picture 
represented a prospect in the country, dimly seen at night; 
solemnity of the approach to this venerable spot, which was surrounded by 
a fence of safety to the cattle without. Here we fastened our horses, and 
followed our guide into the centre of the morass, or rather marshy forest, 
where every step was taken on rotten timber and the spreading roots of tall 
trees, the luxuriant growth of a few years, half of which were tottering over 
our heads. Breathless silence had here taken her reign amid unhealthy 
fogs, and nothing was heard but the fearful crash of some mouldering branch 
or towering beach. It was almost a dead level, and the holes dug for the 
purpose of obtaining- manure, out of which a few bones had been taken six or 
seven years before, were full of water, and connected with others containing 
a vast quantity; so that to empty one was to empty them all ; yet a last effort 
might be crowned with success ; and, since so many difficulties had been 
conquered, it was resolved to embrace the only opportunity that now offered 
for any farther discovery. Machinery was accordingly erected, pumps and 
buckets were employed, and a long course of troughs conducted the water 
among the distant roots to a fall of a few inches, by which the men were en- 
abled, unmolested, unless by the caving in of the banks, to dig on every 
side from the spot where the first discovery of the bones had been made. 
Here alternate success and disappointment amused and fatigued us for a 
long while ; until, with empty pockets, low spirits, and languid workmen, 
we were about to quit the morass with but a small collection, though in good 
preservation, of ribs, toe, and leg bones, &c. In the meanwhile, to leave no 
means untried, the ground was searched in various directions with long- 
pointed rods and cross-handles : after some practice we were able to distin- 
guish by feeling, whatever substances we touched harder than the soil ; and 
by this means, in a very unexpected direction, though not more than twenty 
feet from the first bones that were discovered, struck upon a large collection 
of bones which were dug to and taken up, with every possible care. They 
proved to be a humerus, or large bone of the right leg, with the radius and 
ulna of the left, the right scapula, the atlas, several toe-bones, and the great 
object of our pursuit, a complete under jaw ! 
After such a variety of labour and length of fruitless expectation, this 
success was extremely grateful to all parties, and the unconscious woods 
echoed with the repeated huzzas, which could not have been more animated 
if every tree had participated in the joy. “Gracious God, what a jaw ! how 
many animals have been crushed by it ! ” was the exclamation of all ; a 
fresh supply of grog went around, and the hearty fellows, covered with mud, 
continued the search with increasing vigour. The upper part of the head 
was found twelve feet distant, but so extremely rotten that we could only 
preserve the teeth and a few fragments. In its form it exactly resembled the 
head found at Masten’s ; but, as that was much injured by rough usage, 
this, from its small depth beneath the surface, had the cranium so rotted 
2 
— the cock crows, the horizon brightens gradually into the 
glow of sunrise, gay with the chirping of birds which fly 
from tree to tree; — presently the clouds arise, thick and 
dark, till brightened on their varying edges by the light- 
ning’s flash, accompanied by the roll of thunder; — the rain 
begins to fall, increasing to a heavy shower; but it clears 
away and exhibits a splendid rainbow which commences 
and dies away gradually. Other pieces admirably repre- 
sented the battle between the Bon Homme Richard, com- 
manded by Paul Jones and the British frigate Serapis; and 
the gorgeous display of the temple of Pandemonium. 
Many years before this, an attempt was made to found an 
Academy of the Fine Arts by the few artists who found oc- 
cupation in Philadelphia, chiefly engravers, with Mr. Rush 
the carver, and some foreign artists then sojourning with 
us. Landscape and miniature painters, and with them the 
away as only to show the form around the teeth, and thence extending to the 
condyles of the neck ; the rotten bone formed a black and greasy mould 
above that part which was still entire, yet so tender as to break to pieces on 
lifting it from its bed. 
This collection was rendered still more complete by the addition of those 
formerly taken up, and presented to us by Drs. Graham and Post. They 
were a rib, the sternum, a femur, tibia and fibula, and a patella or knee-pan. 
One of the ribs had found its way into an obscure farmhouse, ten miles 
distant, to which we fortunately traced it. 
Thus terminated this strange and laborious campaign of three months, 
during which we were wonderfully favoured, although vegetation suffered, 
by the driest season which had occurred within eight years. Our venerable 
relics were carefully packed up in distinct cases ; and, loading two wagons 
with them, we bade adieu to the vallies and stupendous mountains of Sha- 
wangunk : so called by their former inhabitants, the Indians of the Lenape 
tribe. The three sets of bones were kept distinct : with the two collections 
which were most numerous it was intended to form two skeletons, by still 
keeping them separate, and filling up the deficiencies in each by artificial imi- 
tations from the other, and from counterparts in themselves. For instance, 
in order to complete the first skeleton, which was found at Masten’s, the un- 
der jaw was to be modelled from this, which is the only entire one that has 
yet been discovered, although we have seen considerable fragments of at 
least ten different jaws; while, on the other hand, in the skeleton just dis- 
covered at Barber’s, the upper jaw, which was found in the extreme of decay, 
was to be completed, so far as it goes, from the more solid fragment of the 
head belonging to the skeleton found at Masten’s. Several feet-bones inthis 
skeleton were to be made from that ; and a few in that were to be made from 
this. In this the right humerus being real, the imitation for the left one 
could be made with the utmost certainty ; and the radius and ulna of the 
left leg being real, those on the right side would follow, of course, &.c. The 
collection of ribs in both cases was almost entire; therefore, having discov- 
ered from a correspondence between the number of vertebrae and ribs in both 
animals, that there were nineteen pair of the latter, it was necessary in only 
four or five instances to supply the counterparts, by correct models from the 
real bones. Tn this manner the two skeletons were formed, and are in both 
instances composed of the appropriate bones of the animal, or exact imitations 
from the real bones in the same skeleton, or from those of the same propor- 
tion in the other. Nothing in either skeleton is imaginary; and what we 
have not unquestionable authority for, we leave deficient ; which happens in 
only two instances, the summit of the head, and the end of the tail. — God- 
man's Nat. Hist, by Rembrandt Peale. 
