Buffalo Land: Authentic Account of the Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific and Sporting Party in the Wild WestWebb, W. E. (William Edward)
History
Buffalo Land: Authentic Account of the Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific and Sporting Party in the Wild West
Webb, W. E. (William Edward)
Hunting -- West (U.S.); Paleontology -- Kansas; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
INDIAN ROCK, on Smoky Hill River, Kansas--From a Photograph.]
That place we found to consist of two buildings, each serving the double
purpose of house and store, the track running between them. Two
sandstone blocks, each weighing several hundred pounds, lay in front of
one of the stores, and there, sure enough, impressed clearly and deeply
upon their surface were the tracks of human feet. They had been
discovered by a Mr. J. B. Hamilton on the adjacent bluffs.
There was something weird and startling in this voice from those
long-forgotten ages--ages no less remote than when the ridge we were
standing upon was a portion of a lake shore. The man who trod those
sands, the professor informed us, perished from the face of the earth
countless ages before the oldest mummy was laid away in the caves of
Egypt; and yet people looked at the shriveled Egyptian, and thought that
they were holding converse with one who lived close upon the time of the
oldest inhabitant. They wrested secrets from his tomb, and called them
very ancient. And now this dweller beside the great lakes had lifted his
feet out of the sand to kick the mummy from his pedestal of honor in the
museum, as but a being of yesterday, in comparison with himself.
This discovery was soon afterward extensively noticed in the newspapers,
and the specimens are now in the collection made by our party at Topeka.
It is but fair to say that a difference of opinion exists in regard to
these imprints. Many scientific men, among whom is Professor Cope,
affirm that they must be the work of Indians long ago, as the age of the
rock puts it beyond the era of man, while others attribute them to some
lower order of animal, with a foot resembling the human one. For my own
part, after careful examination, I accept our professor's theory, that
the imprints are those of human feet. The surface of the stone has been
decided by experts to be bent down, not chiseled out. Science not long
ago ridiculed the primitive man, which it now accepts. It is not
strange, therefore, that science should protest against its oldest
inhabitant stepping out from ages in which it had hitherto forbidden him
existence.
We also found on the rocks fine impressions of leaves, resembling those
of the magnolia, and gathered a bushel of petrified walnuts and
butternuts. There were no other indications whatever of trees, the whole
country, as far as we could see, being a desolate prairie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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