mutations of the earth's surface, in which oceans have changed places with continents and continents with oceans, and whole mountain chains have arisen and disappeared again; while it demonstrates the fact that distinct tribes of animals and plants have sprung into existence, and again vanished to give place to others, and that all these mighty changes have been effected by agencies similar to those that are now ceaselessly active in producing another period of revolution, it also informs us that, as we trace back the chain of existence through the series of fossiliferous strata, almost infinite in duration, we come to a period when all vestiges of organic life are lost in that curious "metamorphism" which the lower rocks have undergone-though we can not say that here even life first dawned on the earth. All we know is, this class of rocks fails to give us any further traces of it. It is by measuring and comparing such vast periods with the limited span of existence comprehended within the circle of our own experience, by confronting, as it were, this endless procession of past events with what transpires around us, or even with the brief unit of time which human history presents to our view, that we gradually come to correct the false impressions that are made upon the mind by dwelling upon the transient and shifting scenes within our own individ. ual experience and observation. We do not reflect enough upon the fact that, after all, our idea of time is but conventional and provisional. common parlance we say time ad vances. In But this is in appearance only. It retrogrades as much as it advances; or, rather, it does neither the one nor the other. It is like a circle that has neither beginning nor end; and as, in traveling this circle, we go backwards just as far as we go forwards, so we only revolve through the circuit of time, being carried in one direction as much as in another; hence, the same amount of time is before us as behind us, and vice versa, though we take into the account only that portion we have trav eled over, and are apt to consider the past as some thing absolutely gone for ever. But this past has just the same reality now that it ever had; the same that the present has at this moment, or that the future ever will have. Neither is past, present, or future, except in our conventional use and notion of the terms. Not to dwell further on this point, I will add that geology also teaches that the creation of a new race carries with it the certainty of its ultimate extinction, just as inevitably as we can argue from the birth of an individual its future decay and dissolution. "Even our own species, as now constituted, with instincts that conform to the original injunction, increase and multiply,' shall one day cease to exist; a fact not less in accordance with belief inseparable from the faith of the Christian, than with the widely-founded experience of the geologist.” * The creation and extinction of species correspond with the birth and death of individuals. Nor ought the frequency of the one event as compared with the other to weaken the probability of that other's occurrence, any more than the fact of the earth's revolving on its own axis in a single day ought to diminish our faith in its revolution round the sun in three hundred and sixty-five. The one with its regular return of seasons is as morally certain as the other with its grateful vicissitudes of day and night. Now, bearing in mind these important considerations; reflecting that in the mind of the Creator "a thousand years are as one day," and that by our conventional use and idea of the word "time," our views of the works of His hand have become warped and nar*Footprints of the Creator. Hugh Miller. Page 304. rowed; and seeing, further, that the origin and extinction of entire races, no matter how protracted the periods that intervene between them, proceed with the same regularity and uniformity of sequence which we witness in the daily phenomena of life and death; the doubts that distract the mind touching the biological laws of creation are gradually dissolved, and we are prepared to ask the following questions: What are the peculiar features of that progress which organic life goes through, as, starting up after immense intervals of time, it appears again and again in new forms? In what particular does the animal kingdom of one geologic period differ from that of another? We have no ground for assuming, in the first place, that the difference is owing to any superiority in physical structure or organization. So far from this, many of the earliest types, as seen in the imperishable records of the rocks, will challenge comparison, in beauty and complexity of arrangement, with the most elaborately finished forms of the present day. Many of our finest marine shells and corals have their analogues in that ancient silurian sea wherein we discover the first dawn of marine life. Nothing can be more remarkable than the trilobites of this sea, with their curious mechanism of vision -those two compound eyes, each forming the frustum of a cone-which, though not uncommon with other crustaceans, is one of those provisions of nature that evinces the highest order of capacity in the Creator, coupled with the most perfect adaptation to the uses of the creature. I might, in this way, go through the whole range of the extinct animal kingdoms, for the purpose of comparing them with the present terrestrial inhabitants, and we should fail to find any signs of structural imperfection or experimental processes of creation, even in the earliest of them. We must, therefore, direct our atten tion elsewhere than to the laws pertaining to physical being, for a true explanation and interpretation of the phenomena before us. These we shall only discover in the law which governs our immaterial nature. The progress which has been made through the immeasurable successive epochs that are marked by the genesis and growth of new species, is a progress in the powers of instinct and intelligence. Life, when it appears in any new shape, goes onward and upward through the soul rather than through the body. Without stopping to inquire whether the evidence is as yet sufficient to authorize us to affirm that the order of the invertebrate animals existed anterior to that of the vertebrate, we are certain that, of the latter, the fish, the first of the order, preceded the reptile, the reptile preceded the bird, the bird preceded the mammal, and the mammal preceded man; and that the advent of these various families of the vertebrates upon the earth marks, with varying regularity, the progress of mental development from the lowest point in the scale to higher and higher degrees. there are not wanting physiologists at the present day who have undertaken to show, by mathematical calculation and figures, what this advance is in the intellectual scale. Thus, they tell us that on comparing the brain with the spinal cord, they find a definite proportion between them, which constantly increases as we ascend from the lower to the higher order of animals; so that while this average proportion in the fish, the lowest of the vertebrates, is not more than as two to one, in man, the highest, it is more than twenty to one. It is not improbable that this law of mental progress among species may have some connection, as it certainly has some analogy, with the law that governs the great consecutive physical changes that take place on the earth's surface after intervals of immense duration. And Those grand and marvellous evolutions of nature through which, as we have seen, whole continents and mountain chains have taken the place of oceans and valleys, may they not in their magnificent march usher in the period when a new race is to take its place upon the earth, which has been prepared and adjusted by new conditions for its habitation and multiplication? And if these great physical revolutions, after being fully wrought out, are thus contemporaneous with the advent of new species, may we not expect the one that is now in progress to be fraught with and to culminate in similar consequences? Are the inscrutable forces of that wonderful Law of Life which I have been considering, dormant and no longer active? Have they, by some miraculous interference, been checked in their course, and deprived of their power? Surely, to beings endowed with reason, "with such vast discourse reaching before and after," there can be but one answer to such a question. But if it had been propounded to our immediate predecessors, the quadrumana, and they had been capable of entertaining it, we might expect some such reply as this: "What folly to imagine any other race ever to come upon the earth! Where are our superiors to be found? And have we not fulfilled all the ends of animate existence? For us the sun was made to shine by day, and the stars by night. The trees grow up to furnish us our food, and the rivers run to slake our thirst. When we cease to exist, behold the end of all things earthly!" And the very next inhabitant of the earth, primordial man, with intellect only a little above the quadrumana, clothed in a form scarcely more human, subsisting like them on the spontaneous fruits of the soil, and exhausting all his resources both of mind and body in contriving how to destroy the other inhabitants, would have returned a similar answer. But to us, to whom it has been given to discover the law whereby the Author of all things has seen fit to introduce the different orders of his creatures upon the earth, at first implanting only the feeblest germ of understanding, following this up in the higher orders with gifts and endowments of a higher nature, and at every step in the series augmenting more and more the measure of wisdom and intelligence, until finally man has been brought upon the stage of action, highly distinguished by the addition of the moral to the rational principle—for us, I say, after discovering this grand clue to the mysteries of our being, to discard it, just as we are entering upon the labyrinth where it may be of some use to us in our progress, is little better than willfully shutting our eyes to the light, and venturing a guess where there is some chance for demonstration. By the light of this law we may see foreshadowed or prefigured before us, as clearly as we can see any thing in the far-distant future, a line of intelligences in respect to whom we may observe that in point of "mentalism," or the faculty by which we judge of the true relations of things, the proportion that holds between ourselves and our immediate predecessors, the quadrumana, may be taken as the minimum of that which will exist between them and ourselves, and that in point of "moralism," or the faculties by which we discover and distinguish moral truth, we may conclude that the post-human inhabitants will have an almost infinite advantage over us, seeing that we are really the first that possess these faculties in the slightest degree, and that to us they are given in such limited measure as scarcely to enable us to discriminate, in cases of doubt or difficulty, the good from the bad, the true from the false; for, with all our boasted progress in ethical knowledge, it will not be disputed by the candid observer that the moral theory, as well as practice, of different nations are antagonistic to each other, and that there is not a moral code or even a precept in any part of the world that is not contradicted by the habits and conduct not only of individuals but of entire communities. Be this as it may, however, the most rigid optimist will not deny that there is much room for improvement in the character and conduct of mankind; and that beings might be called into existence possessed of moral instincts and attributes as much above ours as ours are above the brutes. Upon the peculiar qualities and distinctions of the post-human species, it were vain and idle to venture any specu lations. As well might the first vertebrates, whilst sporting in their native element, undertake to predict the nature and habits of the feathered tribes; nor, doubtless, could their surprise be any greater, if they were able to comprehend that these tribes could live in and cleave the air with the same ease that they could cleave the waters, than ours would be, if we had pictured out before us the characteristics and attributes of the next great family upon the earth. All we know on this subject is what is foreshadowed in the great law of creation, which I have endeavored to trace out, that this family will be far in advance of us in reason and intelligence, as well as in all those moral attributes by which we lay claim to some connection with the Supreme Ruler of the universe. LOST AND FOUND IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. BY J. E. HOOD. the Rocky Mountains, now brought near to the eastern half of the continent by the consummation of the grandest railroad enterprise of the age; should make the acquaintance of some of the old trappers, whose occupation is now nearly gone, and feast eye and soul upon scenery unique and beautiful beyond any thing to be found in the Alps. A few glimpses of this scenery have been caught and fixed upon canvass by Beard and Bierstadt, but its multiform aspects, majestic and resplendent, offer to our artists new scope, and will challenge their genius and skill for ages It needs but acquaintance with these grand focal peaks and parks of the continent to justify the prediction that here, in the near future, art, romance and poetry are to find choicest themes and sublimest inspiration. to come. There are also tales of adventure here yet to be told, that shall rival the wildest creations of the imagination; tales of blood, of captivity, rescue, and revenge-and some of events that are even now occurring - that are scarcely paralleled in our colonial annals. One of these stories, the subjects of which yet live, I will relate. In the spring of 1850, a party of Indians, of the fierce Apache tribe, made a foray into northwestern Texas. Their object was plunder. They were not "on the war path," and killed only those who made a show of resistance. In the day time they avoided the settlements or approached them with peaceful professions; but at night they would make sudden raids, and ride off with all the valuable horses and mules before the people were sufficiently aroused to at tack them; and pursuit was so hazardous and useless that it was not often attempted. The isolated farms or ranches they visited in open day in such numbers that resistance was impossible, and they took whatever they pleased. There was a new settlement of Germans, named Hermann, on the San Saba River, some fifty miles east of Fort Lancaster, whose people, forewarned of the approach of the Indians, forsook their homes and fled, with the exception of a single family, consisting of man and wife, son and daughter. The father undertook to protect his home, and he and his wife were mercilessly sacrificed and their dwelling burned. The children were spared, only to be carried away as captives. The daughter was then about twelve years old. She is now the wife of a Mexican ranchero, not far from Taos, in New Mexico. The son, who was fifteen years old when captured, now resides with his sister, and is herdsman to his Mexican brother. Their strange and eventful story I relate substantially as they told it to me. As they object to the publication of their names, through fear of annoyance from curious visitors, I will call them, for convenience, Karl and Marguerite. The Indians proceeded northwest as rapidly as their horses could be driven, and after many days arrived in a wild mountain region, the approach to which was through a valley dotted with grotesque masses of stone, which the excited imaginations of the German children readily transformed into huge monsters, giants and castles, such as they had read of in their favorite books. One presented the head of an immense sphinx, with a fearful scowl of contempt and scorn upon his rough features. Another was an ugly dwarf, squatting on the summit of a tall pyramid, and threatening to tumble himself down upon their heads. On a castellated cliff near him was what seemed the Chinese pagodas, tall and delicate spires standing alone or in clusters, uncouth idols, animals of various kinds; and, indeed, almost any image could be formed from these singular rocks by an imaginative eye. The place was doubtless what is now known as "The Garden of the Gods," or another corresponding to it in its weird and fantastic scenery, which travelers look upon with awe or mirth, as the mood of the beholder gives to the gigantic shapes frightful or comical semblances. These rocks are granite, capped with limestone, worn into various and extraordinary shapes by the action of the elements through periods of time too long to be represented or comprehended. The Indians also visited a cluster of boiling mineral springs, which they seemed to regard as sacred, for into them they cast offerings of arrows and various trinkets, and sprinkled their own heads and those of their ponies with the water. After leaving the springs the party proceeded westward, and for several days made a circuitous course among the mountains, evidently avoiding the trails. most traveled. One tall peak, crowned with snow, was almost constantly in sight, and seemed to the captive children to be very beautiful. At sunrise and sunset it was brilliantly luminous, displaying in succession a variety of colors and shades, from faint pink through rose, violet and purple, to orange, then to sea green, fading at last into cold white again; and in all its changes of hue seeming to transmit rather than reflect the glow of the sky, and to be a gigantic precious stone in a setting of pearl and emerald. judge that this must have been Pike's Peak, one of the most symmetrical of the Rocky Mountain pinnacles, and excelled in hight and impressiveness only by Mounts Gray and Long; while Rosalie, so named from the wife of Bierstadt, is thought to rival them all in beauty. I |