remarked a very disagreeable taste in the water
used for household purposes. It was taken from
a spring near the house, and, in order to get rid
of this nuisance, he dug round the spring with
a view of making it into a well. While doing
so, he brought to light several bones belonging
to an animal of unusual size, and along with
them a stone knife and an Indian axe. The
affair was talked of throughout the whole
neighbourhood, and Mr. Koch, hearing of it, started
off to see the remains.

On his arrival, he found that most of the arms
had been destroyed, having been dug out
carelessly and exposed to the air; some had been
broken, to see if they contained any marrow!
An intelligent gentleman, however, of the name
of Baily, had collected others, which he gave to
Mr. Koch. They appear to have belonged to
one of the gigantic extinct sloths. On making
further search, Mr. Koch found, nine feet below
the surface close to the site of the remains, a
layer of ashes mixed with charcoal, large pieces
of wood partly burned, together with Indian
implements of war, as stone arrow-heads,
tomahawks, &c., and above a hundred and fifty pieces
of rock, which had evidently been brought from
the river, three hundred yards off, and thrown
at the animal. Some of the animal's teeth had
been broken by the blows, and had escaped the
fire with which the hunters had sought to finish
their work.

The sloth could not have been a very
formidable foe, except in appearance. The
mammoth, however, was a most powerful brute, and
of colossal size: the skeleton being thirty-two
feet long and fifteen feet high, with tusks ten
feet long, and rooted fifteen inches in the head.
Whether this animal lost its life by hunters, or
had perished in a tornado, as might be inferred
from the circumstance of some of the trees, the
fragments of which were found near the animal,
"having been torn up by the roots, and twisted
and split into a thousand pieces, apparently by
lightning, combined with a tremendous tempest,"
it is certain that the finding of the arrow-heads
in both cases, so near the bones of these
monsters, coincides far too strongly with the
discoveries of M. de Perthes to have been the effect
of mere chance. It is also to be remarked
that along with the skeleton were found leaves
of the cypress, great part of a huge flower,
and several stems of the palmetto; in them-
selves evidence that if man had not yet appeared
on the scene, his hour was at hand.

Mr. Koch has endeavoured to prove that his
Missourium was the leviathan of Job. The
strength of jaw, the faculty of trumpeting, the
toughness ot skin, the ferocious and formidable
appearance, the teeth "terrible round about,"
the strength of the neck (showing that the
leviathan was not a crocodile, which has no
neck), are, to a certain extent, in favour of
the view; but the present writer must ex-
press his conviction that, so far as ascertained
proofs go, the animal meant in Job was the
mammoth.

If science and religion can alike appeal to
rude tradition for confirmation of such mighty
events as the Deluge ; if both can find in the
concurring legends of tribes scattered far apart,
proofs which even the most sceptical dare not
refuse ; the writer may be pardoned for seeking
to rescue from oblivion, a fragment of the
hoary old time, singularly in keeping with the
views now so generally adopted.

In far distant ages the Indian steered his
canoe over what are now the vast prairies of
Missouri. At a certain epoch, an army of
gigantic brutes (the mastodons, &c.) came from
the east, and, mounting the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers, a furious battle began between them
and the native monsters of those rivers. Great
numbers fell on both sides; but, after several
desperate combats the intruders seem to have
prevailed, and resumed their march towards the
setting sun. The greatest of all these fights took
place near the bluffs now known as the Rocky
Ridge; and, as soon as the fight was over,
the Indians gathered together many of the
slaughtered animals (strangely confirming the
burning of the great sloth by the Burbois
river), and burned them, as a sacrifice to the
Great Spirit, who according to their traditions
himself buried the rest in the Bigbone river.
Thither, in the happy days of old, the Indians
went yearly, to offer up near the spot their
thanksgivings for deliverance from these
formidable creatures. But as years rolled by, the
pale faces came, and a settler sought to build his
homestead on this fertile part of the land; the
Indians lighted the council-fire and smoked the
red calumet of war, and the white man was glad
to fly. He came again, but some old chiefs
returned and expelled him, and from that day,
until the strong hand of government removed
them, no bribe could induce them to give up this
hallowed ground. When they had quitted it, the
settler came again; and one of the first things he
did was, like the patriarchs of old, to dig a well.
Here, he found several bones of young mastodons,
and might have found more but that he
had to give up digging. Soon after this, the
place was sold, and then a young man employed
to clean the spring found a mastodon's
tooth. Others came, and found more bones,
until at last, in March, 1840, the matter reaching
Mr. Koch's ears, he repaired to the spot,
and disinterred the remains of the mastodon,
which he afterwards exhibited at the Egyptian
Hall.

Every land that has a history can tell how its
first kings and giant warriors conquered and
ruled the earth. In the East, perhaps, more
than in any other clime, these dreams have not
only maintained their vitality, but, in some cases,
have been invested with a splendour and reality
denied to the tales of more sober Europe. One
of the most striking of the gorgeous scenes in
Vathek is the picture of the fleshless forms of
the pre-Adamite kings, lying on beds of
incorruptible cedar. Strange it some skilful penman
should one day have the means presented
to him of welding into a great fact, the
traditions of the most polished nations of the