waters. St. Louis is three hundred feet above the gulf, and as it is about twelve hundred miles by the course of the river we have just three inches average descent for all that distance. But we will take Sir C. Lyell's own estimate of one foot in a century as the average rise of the valley by the deposition of river mud. This will make the skeleton sixteen hundred instead of fifty thousand years old. This is time enough for four cypress forests to grow and be superimposed one above the other with several hundred rings in each tree.

That the whole lower Mississippi valley is rising rapidly by the deposition of river mud, is evident from the fact that the leveeing or raising the embankments of the river to keep the waters in the channel has only been resorted to for a comparatively short period of time, and already the river presents the appearance of a raised ditch. Had not Sir C. Lyell in another instance given us his estimate of one foot rise in a century, all we could have said of him after the facts were known would be that a great scientific light was in error. But for him to indorse the monstrous absurdity of Dr. B. Dowler, assigning a period of fifty thousand years for a rise of sixteen feet in the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi valley, directly in opposition to his own previously published views, shows a disposition on his part to strengthen a favorite theory by any and all

means.

Another fact to show the very rapid rise in the sediment of these great Western rivers is that large old trees growing far from the river show no appearance of roots near the surface of the ground, but appear as if sunken one, two, or three feet, according to the age of the tree. Along the bank of the river, in the progress of being cut away, I have often seen the roots of trees four, six, or eight feet below the surface, showing the amount of sediment that had accumulated during the age one tree, thus:

of

The case of No. 1 would be a tree that sprung up on low lands near the river where the rise was more rapid than on the alluvial plain generally. As the sediment rose so rapidly the first set of roots were too deep for nourishment, and so a new set were thrown out near the surface, and this process was repeated several times, the tree all the time enlarging, until it assumed the appearance of a gigantic beet with tap roots. No. 2 would be a tree on the general level, and of a species that did not throw out tap roots as the sediment rose. No. 3 is a young tree taking root on the surface in the ordinary

way.

The absurdity of assigning such a fabulous antiquity to the Mississippi is apparent from another fact, that, according to Sir C. Lyell's own estimate, all the high bluffs along the lower Mississippi should have been obliterated seventy-five thousand years ago, for as the bluffs are only two hundred feet high at Natchez, and the bed of the river or surface of the water at this point less than one hundred feet above the gulf, one foot in a century would take less than thirty thousand years to cover all the bluffs along this part of the river. At the same time it would have pushed the delta at the present rate of increase far into South America so as to cross the Amazon.

IV. THE NATCHEZ SKELETON.

On page 200 another fact is adduced to prove the great antiquity of man. In 1846 the skeleton of a man was found sixty feet from the surface of the soil at Natchez, and one hundred and forty feet above the river in a bank that was being newly undermined by the river. From this fact it is asserted as probable that the Mississippi valley has been inhabited over one hundred thousand years. These human bones were associated with those of the mammoth and other extinct mammalia. They were found at the bottom of a sandy loam called loess in Europe, and it is supposed that all the lower alluvial valley, three hundred or more miles in extent, has been formed since these old bones were deposited where found.

Before we can come to any satisfactory conclusion regarding the age of these human and other remains, we must first endeavor to gain more light regarding this loess. What is it?

How formed and distributed? Where and in what positions is it now found? To answer these questions will take some time, but clearing up this point will greatly aid us in other things.

1. This loess is a sandy loam very peculiar in its formation. In places it is two hundred feet thick. In one place it is eight hundred or more feet in thickness. (See page 327.) It covers a large part of Central Europe like a mantle. It is spread over high table-lands six hundred feet above the rivers in Central France, and in the Carpathian mountains it is found one thousand feet above the sea. It thins out to the south and castward, but is not found in England, or north of 50° north latitude in Europe. In America, relatively to the drift formation, it occupies the same position as in Europe, and is of the same character. Sir C. Lyell and others it seems are agreed that the loess found in Europe came from the Alps, being brought down in the course of long ages by glaciers, and dis-· tributed by the overflow of rivers over nearly all Central Europe. On page 334 he says, "But we must suppose that the amount of depression and re-elevation in the central region was considerably in excess of that experienced in the lower countries, or those near the sea, and that the rate of subsidence in the latter was never so considerable as to cause submergence, or the admission of the sea into the interior of the continent by the valleys of the principal rivers."

There would seem to have been some very nice adjusting power so to sink and keep sunk for such untold ages the central regions, and at the same time leave a fringe along the ocean as a barrier.

But he informs us the old river valleys were all filled пр with this loess, and were afterward re-excavated. If in that part of Europe with this supposed great central depression the rains and snows exceeded the amount of evaporation, a great internal lake would be formed. But if the Alps were sunk so low, how were the glaciers formed? If the whole region was submerged so many ages, how comes it there are such immense accumulations of the bones of large extinct races of animals with some of the works and bones of man under this loess, and mixed more or less through it? These are questions that are not discussed. A theory has been adopted and is entirely unbending;

all else is plastic and must yield to it. On page 335 he says, "Yet the oscillations of level were accomplished without any perceptible derangement of the strata, which remained all the while horizontal, so that the lower cretaceous or neocomian beds were deposited conformably on the oolite."

If the Alps by glacial action produced such an immense amount of loess, should we not reasonably look for this formation in the vicinity of other mountain chains within the latitudes that produced glaciers? The Scandinavian mountains, according to this theory, should have been a great source of supply, but we have no account of this formation in Sweden or Norway. The Ural mountains also should have spread this formation over a great part of northern Russia; we have the so-called glacial drift in these regions in abundance, but no loess. Scotland and Wales also should have produced loess, but there is none there. In North America there is a great abundance of this loess, but apparently it has no connection with mountain chains or glacier-producing regions. We have no account of it in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, nor have we ever seen it along the Laurentian chain in a distance of two thousand miles where we have personally explored them. Loess is found in Southern Iowa, Northern Missouri, Central Illinois, and Indiana, and more or less along this line of latitude, somewhere about 40° north.

Both in Europe and America the loess commences just where the drift terminates, and extends some distance southward. It covers vast regions in the Mississippi valley, being found almost equally spread over hill and dale; along mountain chains that happen to lie in this latitude, and far away from them. It covers the central parts of the great plain of North America almost equi-distant from the three great mountain chains that traverse the continent. Even in Europe, in the vicinity of the Alps, so many supposed upheavals and submersions have to be resorted to to account for the formation and distribution of this loess, and all these changes so nicely adjusted, and so many things unaccounted for after all, that it is very difficult to understand how glaciers could have performed such wonders. But when we come to account for its appearance and distribution in America, we find the theories as applied to Europe of no manner of utility. Even if we admit the correctness of the theories

as applied to Europe, totally different conditions and causes must have existed during its formation and distribution in America, at the same time there is a perfect identity in the character of the formation in both continents. Is it not a remarkable fact that in neither continent is the loess found in the latitudes where the drift prevails, but immediately south of it; and that both these formations, where undisturbed and not rearranged, are found devoid of both stratification and shells, either marine or fresh water? Were ever any depositions made gradually in water without both stratification and shells? Again, the animal remains found in both these formations, as far as we can judge, appear identical as to age. We are strongly of the opinion that there is a closer relationship between them than has ever yet been suspected, especially when we take into consideration the fact that the so-called glacial drift or jointed clay is sifted, so to speak, the heavier particles being deposited nearer the source of supply, not uniformly, but usually further north, and that the lighter particles were wafted further south. The present writer was this spring examining the drift in undisturbed banks along the Saugeen river only one hundred and thirty miles north of Sarnia, and there are ten times as much gravel and small stones in it at Saugeen as at Sarnia. What more reasonable than to suppose that the loess is but part and parcel of the great northern drift; and that being lighter it was wafted further south. In both Europe and America the old post-pliocene river-beds are found filled up with both drift and loess, sometimes reexcavated, and sometimes not in the post-glacial period. Professor Hitchcock has pointed out the existence of ten such old river beds in North America. I have discovered several of them in Canada and the Hudson Bay region. The evidence appears conclusive as to the identity between the drift and loess, both as to cause and time, and yet the theories of Sir C. Lyell and others are based on the supposition that they are totally different as to origin, and that one hundred thousand years is a low estimate as to the time that may have intervened between them, or between the glacial drift of Europe and America.

To keep our Natchez fossil man in view. How came loess as far south as Natchez, in 32° north? and how came it to