becomes more interesting, to those in particular who are disposed to think on the subject; whether its extirpation be attributed to the power of man, the prevalence of famine, or the violent and sudden irruption of water. There are many facts to support this latter opinion, which I confess myself disposed to adopt.

Orange and Ulster counties in the state of New York, are situated westward of the Hudson and northward of West Point; from the Shawangunk mountain, which is a long ridge east of the blue mountains, they appear as an immense plain, bounded on every side by stupendous mountains, the situation of which certainly tend to confirm the authenticity of an Indian tradition, which states them formerly to have been the boundaries of a great lake; and it would now be a lake if the high mountains on each side of the Hudson near West Point were united, as probably they may have been. It is a fact that all over the country, the stones, which in a curious manner are strewed over the ground, from the largest to the smallest, have been worn round by long-continued friction, as if by the agitation of water; more particularly in the lowest and flat situations, where the stones are larger, and gradually becoming smaller in the higher situations. The surface of the country, though by no means so level as it appears from the mountains, is formed of single hills, prominences, or swelling knolls, which have the appearance of having been caused by the agitation of water. Many of the cavities between these knolls are dry, others are in the state of ponds, but an infinite number contain morasses, which must originally have been ponds, supplied by springs which still flow at their bottoms, and filled, in the course of ages, with a succession of shellfish and the decay of vegetables; so that at present they are covered with timber, and have been so within the memory of man. An old man, upwards of sixty, informed us, that all the difference he could remark between these morasses now and what they were fifty years ago, was, that then they were generally covered with firs, and now with beech. This was verified by the branches and logs of fir which we found in digging; many pieces of which had been cut by beavers, the former inhabitants of these places when in the state of ponds. Scarcely a fir is now to be found in the country.

On digging into these morasses you generally have to remove from one to two feet of peat or turf; you then enter on a stratum, from one to two feet thick, of what the farmers call the yellow marle, composed of vegetable earth intermixed with long yellow roots; next the grey marle, which resembles wet ashes, to the further depth of two feet; and finally a bed of decayed shells, which they call shell-marle, the upper surface of which forms a horizontal line across the morass, consequently it is thicker in the center than at the edges; under this, forming the bottom of the pond or morass, is found gravel and slate covering a thick stratum of clay. It was in the white and yellow marle the bones were generally found; those in the white in the highest preservation, less so in the grey; and where an end happened to rise into the yellow stratum it was proportionally decayed: One cause of this must have been the accession of air when the springs in dry seasons were low.

The grey marle, in which most of the bones lay, by analysis was found to contain seventy-three parts in the hundred of lime: when dried in the sun it cracks into thin horizontal laminæ, and becomes extremely light, as hard as baked clay, and brittle; in this state it burns with a bright flame for a long while, and instead of leaving ashes, it remains a strong black coal, apparently well adapted to the purposes of the arts.

These various strata are the production of a long succession of ages, and, in my opinion, have been formed over the bones. In two of the morasses there was not depth sufficient to have bemired an animal of such magnitude and strength; and in the third the bones were lying near the sloping edge, from which some of them had already been washed farther in: The animals have either died or been destroyed generally over the country, and only in these situations have been preserved; or they have sought these cool places to die in; or perhaps both.

No calculation can be made of the length of time necessary to have formed these morasses, although we are certain that, as in fifty years past scarcely any change appears, it must have been proportionally slower in the commencement; and a period has elapsed in which all accounts of this animal have dwindled into oblivion, except a confused Indian tradition.

In the neighbourhood of these morasses are found an infinite number of petrifactions, a few specimens of which I have brought with me: they are in strange and unknown figures, and appear to be generally marine productions, as various species of coral and sea-urchins were likewise found among them. Two revolutions in nature must have contributed to this effect; one in which the petrifactions were formed by a copious incrustation of calcareous matter, in a semifluid state; and a subsequent one, in which the stones have been broken to pieces, worn into a round shape, and finally deposited, an hundred miles from the sea, and many hundreds from those seas where corals are produced.

Here a question of some importance arises; could this animal have been destroyed in a deluge, which must have been sudden and powerful enough to produce those great effects? And was the entire race of them thereby rendered extinct? Certain it is that they are no where to be found, nor their footsteps traced. Among the Indians of North America, from nation to nation, the tradition has spread and prevails, which relates their former existence and their sudden extirpation. I shall here give a tradition, said to be in the very terms of a Shawanee Indian, as published in Winterbotham’s History of America, which appears in an embellished dress from an English pen, but founded on a real tradition. I have questioned, through their interpreters, various and distant nations of Indians, and have known of many others, and all their accounts agree in the main story, though they vary in some of the subordinate parts.