University of Virginia Library

2. Part Second.

HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD COMPLETED THEIR SCIENTIFIC LABORS.

A week later the expedition camped in the midst of a collection of wonderful
curiosities. These were a sort of vast caverns of stone that rose singly and in
bunches out of the plain by the side of the river which they had first seen when
they emerged from the forest. These caverns stood in long straight rows on
opposite sides of broad aisles that were bordered with single ranks of trees. The
summit of each cavern sloped sharply both ways. Several horizontal rows of great
square holes, obstructed by a thin, shiny, transparent substance, pierced the frontage
of each cavern. Inside were caverns within caverns; and one might ascend and
visit these minor compartments by means of curious winding ways consisting of
continuous regular terraces raised one above another. There were many huge
shapeless objects in each compartment which were considered to have been living
creatures at one time, though now the thin brown skin was shrunken and loose,
and rattled when disturbed. Spiders were here in great number, and their cobwebs,
stretched in all directions and wreathing the great skinny dead together,
were a pleasant spectacle, since they inspired with life and wholesome cheer a
scene which would otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness
and desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They were
of a different nationality from those with the expedition and their language seemed
but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid, gentle race, but ignorant,
and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods. The expedition detailed a great
detachment of missionaries to teach them the true religion, and in a week's time a
precious work had been wrought among those darkened creatures, not three families
being by that time at peace with each other or having a settled belief in any system
of religion whatever. This encouraged the expedition to establish a colony of
missionaries there permanently, that the work of grace might go on.

But let us not outrun our narrative. After close examination of the fronts of
the caverns, and much thinking and exchanging of theories, the scientists determined
the nature of these singular formations. They said that each belonged
mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the cavern fronts rose in innumerable
and wonderfully regular strata high in the air, each stratum about five frog-spans
thick, and that in the present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all
received geology: for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a
thin layer of decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old
Red Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred and seventy-five!
And by the same token it was plain that there had also been a hundred
and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of limestone strata! The
unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts, was, the overwhelming truth that
the world, instead of being only two hundred thousand years old, was older by
millions upon millions of years! And there was another curious thing: every
stratum of Old Red Sandstone was pierced and divided at mathematically regular
intervals by vertical strata of limestone. Up-shootings of igneous rock through
fractures in water formations were common; but here was the first instance where
water-formed rock had been so projected. It was a great and noble discovery and
its value to science was considered to be inestimable.

A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the presence of
fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their peculiar goods), and
with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon the scientific record; for this
was proof that these vulgar laborers belonged to the first and lowest orders of
created beings, though at the same time there was something repulsive in the
reflection that the perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order
owed its origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of Development
of Species.

The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the parvenus
of these new times should find what comfort they might in their wise-drawn
theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to be of the old first
families and proud to point back to his place among the old original aristocracy of
the land.

“Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's veneering,
since you like it,” said he; “suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs that they come of a
race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the solemn aisles of antiquity, and left
their imperishable works embalmed in the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the
wasting centuries as they file
along the highway of Time!”

“O, take a walk!” said the
chief of the expedition, with
derision.

The summer
passed, and winter approached.
In and about many of the caverns
were what seemed to be
inscriptions. Most of the
scientists said they were ininscriptions,
a few said they
were not. The chief philologist,
Professor Woodlouse, maintained
that they were writings,
done in a character utterly unknown
to scholars, and in a
language equally unknown.
He had early ordered his
artists and draughtsmen to make fac-similes of all that were discovered; and had set
himself about finding the key to the hidden tongue. In this work he had followed
the method which had always been used by decipherers previously. That is to say,
he placed a number of copies of inscriptions before him and studied them both collectively
and in detail. To begin with, he placed the following copies together:

The American Hotel.

The Shades.

Boats for Hire Cheap.

Billiards.

The A 1 Barber Shop.

Meals at all Hours.

No Smoking.

Union Prayer Meeting, 4 P. M.

The Waterside Journal.

Telegraph Office.

Keep off the Grass.

Try Brandreth's Pills.

Cottages for Rent during the Watering Season.

For Sale Cheap.

For Sale Cheap.

For Sale Cheap.

For Sale Cheap.

At first it seemed to the Professor that this was a sign-language, and that each
word was represented by a distinct sign; further examination convinced him that it
was a written language, and that every letter of its alphabet was represented by a
character of its own; and finally, he decided that it was a language which conveyed
itself partly by letters, and partly by signs or hieroglyphics. This conclusion was
forced upon him by the discovery of several specimens of the following nature:

He observed that certain inscriptions were met with in greater frequency than
others. Such as “For Sale Cheap;” “Billiards;” “S. T.—1860—X;” “Keno;”
“Ale on Draught.” Naturally, then, these must be religious maxims. But this
idea was cast aside, by and by, as the mystery of the strange alphabet began to
clear itself. In time, the Professor was enabled to translate several of the inscriptions
with considerable plausibility, though not to the perfect satisfaction of all the
scholars. Still, he made constant and encouraging progress.

Finally a cavern was discovered with these inscriptions upon it:

WATERSIDE MUSEUM.

Open at all Hours. Admission 50 cents.

Wonderful Collection of Wax-Works, Ancient Fossils, etc.

Professor Woodlouse affirmed that the word “Museum” was equivalent to the

phrase “lumgath molo,” or “Burial-Place.” Upon entering, the scientists were
well astonished. But what they saw may be best conveyed in the language of their
own official report:

“Erect, and in a row, were a sort of rigid great figures which struck us instantly
as belonging to the long extinct species of reptile called Man, described in our
ancient records. This was a peculiarly gratifying discovery, because of late times
it has become fashionable to regard this creature as a myth and a superstition, a
work of the inventive imaginations of our remote ancestors. But here, indeed, was
Man, perfectly preserved, in a fossil state. And this was his burial place, as
already ascertained by the inscription. And now it began to be suspected that the
caverns we had been inspecting had been his ancient haunts in that old time that
he roamed the earth—for upon the breast of each of these tall fossils was an
inscription in the character heretofore noticed. One read, `Captain Kidd, the
Pirate;' another `Queen Victoria;' another, `Abe Lincoln;' another, `George
Washington,' etc.

“With feverish interest we called for our ancient scientific records to discover if
perchance the description of Man there set down would tally with the fossils before
us. Professor Woodlouse read it aloud in its quaint and musty phraseology, to
wit:

“`In ye time of our fathers Man still walked ye earth, as by tradition we know.
It was a creature of exceeding great size, being compassed about with a loose skin,
sometimes of one color, sometimes of many, the which it was able to cast at will;
which being done, the hind legs were discovered to be armed with short claws like
to a mole's but broader, and ye fore-legs with fingers of a curious slimness and a
length much more prodigious than a frog's, armed also with broad talons for
scratching in ye earth for its food. It had a sort of feathers upon its head such as
hath a rat, but longer, and a beak suitable for seeking its food by ye smell thereof.
When it was stirred with happiness, it leaked water from its eyes; and when it suffered
or was sad, it manifested it with a horrible hellish cackling clamor that was
exceeding dreadful to hear and made one long that it might rend itself and perish,
and so end its troubles. Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each
other like to this: `Haw-haw-haw—dam good, dam good,' together with other

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 503EAF. Page 142. Image of the forest animals examining notable humans in a wax museum. They are gathered around Captain Kidd and George Washington.]

sounds of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they
talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he knows.
Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it putteth to its
face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a sudden and most damnable
bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to death, and so seizeth it in its talons
and walketh away to its habitat, consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.'

“Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully endorsed
and confirmed by the fossils
before us, as shall be seen.
The specimen marked `Captain
Kidd' was examined in detail.
Upon its head and part
of its face was a sort of fur like
that upon the tail of a horse.
With great labor its loose skin
was removed, whereupon its
body was discovered to be of
a polished white texture, thoroughly
petrified. The straw it had
eaten, so many ages gone by,
was still in its body, undigested—and
even in its legs.

“Surrounding these fossils
were objects that would
mean nothing to the ignorant,
but to the eye of science they
were a revelation. They laid bare the secrets of dead ages. These musty Memorials
told us when Man lived, and what were his habits. For here, side by side
with Man, were the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation,
the companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten
time.—Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here was the
skeleton of the mustodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave bear, the prodigious elk.

Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these extinct animals and of the
young of Man's own species, split lengthwise, showing that to his taste the marrow
was a toothsome luxury. It was plain that Man had robbed those bones of their
contents, since no tooth-mark of any beast was upon them—albeit the Tumble-Bug
intruded the remark that “no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.”
Here were proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact
was conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words, `Flint
Hatchets, Knives, Arrow-Heads, and Bone-Ornaments of Primeval Man.'
Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and in a secret
place was found some more in process of construction, with this untranslatable
legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by:

“Jones, if you don't want to be discharged from the Musseum, make the next primeaveal
weppons more careful—you couldn't even fool one of these sleapy old syentiffic
grannys from the Coledge with the last ones. And mind you the animles you carved on
some of the Bone Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that
was ever fooled.—Varnum, Manager.”

“Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always had a
feast at a funeral—else why the ashes in such a place? and showing, also, that he
believed in God and the immortality of the soul—else why these solemn ceremonies?

To sum up.—We believe that man had a written language. We know that he
indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the companion of
the cave bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that he cooked and ate
them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that he bore rude weapons, and
knew something of art; that he imagined he had a soul, and pleased himself with
the fancy that it was immortal. But let us not laugh; there may be creatures in
existence to whom we and our vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous.”