The soil is evidently raised by the vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These remains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic foundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may easily thrust a cane into it up to the handle." When M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they replied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who came from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese, and whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one another. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones of which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they hunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of blood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments of the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of China, and that the people there call them "giants' stones." The traveller in Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks evidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from any calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other matters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked. Some will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was before the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport unknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of the savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder or machinery is a problem we are unable to solve. Important discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men. The earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be overdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their very exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather than otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who discovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the river Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks for fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure and habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived from mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy of attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may, on the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution of questions of importance in oriental history. -------- Original On the Planting of the Cross. Dig deep: the tree will surely grow, And spread its branches far and wide; No tree had e'er such fruit to show, Nor with its shade so much to hide. -------- {140} Miscellany.