"There is current among these barbarians," says the author, "a pleasant-enough tradition of a Great Elk, beside whom all others seem like ants. He has, they say, legs so high that eight feet of snow does not embarrass him, his skin is proof against all sorts of weapons, and he has a sort of arm which comes out of his shoulder and which he uses as we do ours." Whatever we may have previously thought of these legends, their evidence now combined with that of the carving is irresistible. Nothing but the mammoth itself, surviving into comparatively recent times and encountered by the Indians, could suffice to account for the carving, and we can no longer suppose that the size and unusual appearance of the mammoth bones seen by the Indians in Kentucky could alone have originated the traditions. In the carving, we have the most interesting mammoth picture in existence; not a mere drawing of the animal itself, but a picture of primitive life, in which the mammoth takes a conspicuous part in the actions and thoughts of man,--a carving made with a bone or flint instrument upon a tablet of slate at least four hundred years ago,--the hairy elephant, drawn in unmistakable outline, and attacked by human beings,--a battle-scene which thrills our imagination, and the importance of which the ancient draughtsman magnifies by the introduction of the symbols of his religion, the sun, moon, and stars, and the lightning alone powerful to overthrow the great enemy. All is evidently the work of the Indian; so would he rudely carve trees, the pine with its straight-spreading arms, like a modern telegraph pole; his forest wigwam, a simple triangle; the sun, with human face, and a halo; and the moon, a crescent; the stars were small crosses, and diverging lines were the rays of light that traversed the sky from the great luminaries. Men were triangles with their sides produced, and three dots in the head for eyes, nose, and mouth; here the minute forms standing their ground before the great beast, are warriors, with feathers in their hair, and bows and lances in their hands. The chief figure, the great buffalo, or the great elk of Charlevoix, armed with a proboscis, as the Indians may well have named the mammoth, is assailed, as in the Jefferson tradition, by lightning.