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3. Part Third.
Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge, shapely
stone, with this inscription:
“In 1847, in the spring, the river overflowed its banks and covered the whole township.
The depth was from two to six feet. More than 900 head of cattle were lost,
and many homes destroyed. The Mayor ordered this memorial to be erected to perpetuate
the event. God spare us the repetition of it!”
With infinite trouble, Professor Woodlouse succeeded in making a translation of
this inscription, which was sent home and straightway an enormous excitement was
created about it. It confirmed, in a remarkable way, certain treasured traditions
of the ancients. The translation was slightly marred by one or two untranslatable
presented:
“One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven years ago, the (fires?) descended and
consumed the whole city. Only some nine hundred souls were saved, all others destroyed.
The (king?) commanded this stone to be set up to..... (untranslable)..... prevent
the repetition of it.”
This was the first successful and satisfactory translation that had been made of
the mysterious character left behind him by extinct man, and it gave Professor
Woodlouse such reputation that at once every seat of learning in his native land
conferred a degree of the most illustrious grade upon him, and it was believed that
if he had been a soldier and had turned his splendid talents to the extermination
of a remote tribe of reptiles, the king would have ennobled him and made him rich.
And this, too, was the origin of that school of scientists called Manologists, whose
specialty is the deciphering of the ancient records of the extinct bird termed Man.
[For it is now decided that Man was a bird and not a reptile]. But Professor
Woodlouse began and remained chief of these, for it was granted that no translations
were ever so free from error as his. Others made mistakes—he seemed incapable
of it. Many a memorial of the lost race was afterward found, but none ever
attained to the renown and veneration achieved by the “Mayoritish Stone”—it
being so called from the word “Mayor” in it, which, being translated “King,”
“Mayoritish Stone” was but another way of saying “King Stone.”
Another time the expedition made a great “find.” It was a vast round flattish
mass, ten frog-spans in diameter and five or six high. Professor Snail put on his
spectacles and examined it all around, and then climbed up and inspected the top.
He said:
“The result of my perlustration and perscontation of this isoperimetrical protuberance
is a belief that it is one of those rare and wonderful creations left by the
Mound Builders. The fact that this one is lamellibranchiate in its formation,
simply adds to its interest as being possibly of a different kind from any we read
of in the records of science, but yet in no manner marring its authenticity. Let
the megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory
and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made and
learning gather new treasures.”
Not a Tumble-Bug could be found on duty, so the Mound was excavated by a
working party of Ants. Nothing was discovered. This would have been a great
disappointment, had not the venerable Longlegs explained the matter.—He said:
“It is now plain to me that the mysterious and forgotten race of Mound Builders
did not always erect these edifices as mausoleums, else in this case as in all previous
cases, their skeletons would be found here, along with the rude implements which
the creatures used in life. Is not this manifest?”
“True! true!” from everybody.
“Then we have made a discovery of peculiar value here; a discovery which
greatly extends our knowledge of this creature in place of diminishing it; a discovery
which will add lustre to the achievements of this expedition and win for us the
commendations of scholars everywhere. For the absence of the customary relics
here means nothing less than this: The Mound Builder, instead of being the ignorant,
savage reptile we have been taught to consider him, was a creature of cultivation
and high intelligence, capable of not only appreciating worthy achievements
of the great and noble of his species, but of commemorating them! Fellow-scholars,
this stately Mound is not a sepulchre, it is a monument!”
A profound impression was produced by this.
But it was interrupted by rude and derisive laughter—and the Tumble-Bug
appeared.
“A monument!” quoth he. “A monument set up by a Mound Builder! Aye,
so it is! So it is, indeed, to the shrewd keen eye of science; but to an ignorant
poor devil who has never seen a college, it is not a Monument, strictly speaking,
but is yet a most rich and noble property; and with your worships' good permission
I will proceed to manufacture it into spheres of exceeding grace and—”
The Tumble-Bug was driven away with stripes, and the draughtsmen of the
expedition were set to making views of the Monument from different standpoints,
while Professor Woodlouse, in a frenzy of scientific zeal, traveled all over it and all
around it hoping to find an inscription. But if there had ever been one it had
decayed or been removed by some vandal as a relic.
The views having been completed, it was now considered safe to load the
precious Monument itself upon the backs of four of the largest Tortoises and send
with enormous éclat and escorted to its future abiding-place by thousands of enthusiastic
citizens, King Bullfrog XVI. himself attending and condescending to sit
enthroned upon it throughout the progress.
The growing rigor of the weather was now admonishing the scientists to close
their labors for the present, so they made preparations to journey homeward. But
even their last day among the Caverns bore fruit; for one of the scholars found in
an out-of-the-way corner of
the Museum or “Burial-Place”
a most strange and extraordinary
thing. It was nothing less than
a double Man-Bird lashed together
breast to breast by a natural
ligament, and labelled
with the untranslatable words,
“Siamese Twins” The official report
concerning this thing closed
thus:
“Wherefore it
appears that there were in old
times two distinct species of
this majestic fowl, the one being
single and the other double.
Nature has a reason for all
things.—It is plain to the eye
of science that the Double-Man
originally inhabited a region where dangers abounded; hence he was paired
together to the end that while one part slept the other might watch; and likewise
that, danger being discovered, there might always be a double instead of a single
power to oppose it. All honor to the mystery-dispelling eye of godlike Science!”
And near the Double Man-Bird was found what was plainly an ancient record of
his, marked upon numberless sheets of a thin white substance and bound together.
Almost the first glance that Professor Woodlouse threw into it revealed this
a tremble, and it uplifted every soul there with exultation and astonishment:
“In truth it is believed by many that the lower animals reason and talk together.”
When the great official report of the expedition appeared, the above sentence
bore this comment:
“Then there are lower animals than Man! This remarkable passage can mean
nothing else. Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist. What can they be?
Where do they inhabit? One's enthusiasm bursts all bounds in the contemplation
of the brilliant field of discovery and investigation here thrown open to science.
We close our labors with the humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately
appoint a commission and command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search
for this hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with
success.”
The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its faithful
endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole grateful country.
There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as there always are and always
will be; and naturally one of these was the obscene Tumble-Bug. He said that all
he had learned by his travels was that science only needed a spoonful of supposition
to build a mountain of demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he
meant to be content with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures
and not go prying into the august secrets of the Deity.
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