Cardiff giant; Geology -- New York (State) -- Onondaga County
The valley of Onondaga has a romance of beauty in its wild scenery,
and as the home of the famous tribe of the red men of the forest--
the Onondagas--around whose council fires the chiefs and young
warriors of the Six Nations assembled to consult on matters of
great moment. It commences at the head of Onondaga Lake, having
a broad surface where the main part of our city stands, and moderate
hill-side boundaries, until we pass two miles south of the city
bounds, where the bed of the basin begins to narrow away and the
hills on either side to be more abrupt and higher. It continues
to decrease in width, until it terminates against Tully Hill, a
distance of fourteen miles from the lake. Its beauty of wild
scenery is perhaps in greatest perfection in that part known as the
Indian Reservation--still held by the Onondaga tribe--somewhat
south of the centre of the valley. Two main roads lead up the
valley, one at the base of the hills on either side; and riding
along either of them in a pleasant day, an admirer of nature's
wild grandeur has ample occasion of admiration. The gentle slope,
rising way back and up as if touching the clouds, and the more
abrupt and ragged, shrub-covered, not less high hills, miniature
mountains, with every now and then a ravine down which the water
leaps playfully along till it reaches the plateau below and into
the little creek on its way to the ocean--is a landscape of beauty
not easily described.
Just now this valley is the scene of an excitement, in the finding
of a supposed petrifaction of a human being--a giant. The point
of interest is on the south side of the valley, opposite and just
beyond the little village of Cardiff, in the town of Lafayette--
twelve miles from this city, on a farm belonging to Mr. William
C. Newell.
On Saturday last Mr. Newell thought to dig a well some six or seven
rods east of his house, and a trifle south-east of his barn. The
spot is probably thirty feet below the house, and the surface soil
is a loose, half sand, half dark muck, the natural washing from
the hills above. It is not more than twenty rods from the creek,
the channel of which is thought to have been at or very near this
spot many years ago. Mr. Newell and a hired man, in digging, had
gone down but two and a half feet when something hard was struck,
which was believed to be a stone. They thought but little of it
at first, expecting to have to break it loose and pry it out. But
throwing out a few more shovels of earth from its side, the feet
of a man appeared. A few minutes more of labor exposed the legs
to the calf; and now their interest being excited, they began to
dig carefully around it, until the whole form of a man--petrified
giant--was brought to view. The neighbors began to hear of what
was found, and of course went at once to see.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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