"Hands off," was the imperative order of the proprietor, and I
bowed to the decreer. I craved permission to apply a drop of
acid in order to determine certainly whether the material was
gypsum or ordinary limestone, but my request was denied. If on
the application of acid there had been no effervescence, the
inference would be that the specimen was not limestone, the
material of which petrifactions are usually composed. But although
chemical tests and manipulations were prohibited, there seemed to
be no disposition to forbid the use of our eyes--at a respectful
distance. And the proprietor very kindly refrained from exacting
a promise that we would not express an opinion, if we should have
temerity enough to form one.
I take it that this specimen was carefully placed in its present
locality. Had it been washed from a distance, it would have been
fractured and mutilated, and it would not in all likelihood, have
lodged in its present easy and natural position.
If this were once a living man, he must have died ages and ages ago.
If buried, the accumulated deposits upon his grave, in this low
piece of ground, during thousands of years would have been deeper
than three feet. If he were drowned, or if he lay down on the
surface of the earth to die, the flesh would have decayed and
dropped from his bones without petrification. If he were petrified
in his present locality, we ought to find other petrifications in
its immediate neighborhood, whereas all the twigs and branches
which covered and surrounded him are free from the slightest
encrustation.
Human bodies do not petrify in layers; but the strata in the
Cardiff giant, especially on the left side, are as manifest as
they are in a ledge of rocks. The eye brows, the tip of the nose,
the breast and the thigh are of the same stratum, and the layers
in the right arm are clearly of different degrees of density.
The conclusion seems irresistible that the giant is a work of art
rather than of nature. The sculpture must have been done some
years ago, or the lower parts of the figure would not have crumbled
and been washed away by the sluggish oozing of the water through
the soil.
Its age cannot antedate the present race of men, for the shape of
the head and the features are entirely modern. The old-time people,
as portrayed in the sculpture of Assyria and Egypt, had no such
heads as this. The artist evidently took a corpse for a model
and proportioned his colossal figure by careful measurement. He
was thus enabled to secure the general anatomical accuracy for
which his giant is remarkable. He followed the model very closely,
not attempting to represent a living being, not venturing even to
supply the missing hair. And these omissions, the result of
inexperience, furnish, singularly enough, the principal arguments
to the petrifactionists. For the popular opinion that the body
and head are hollow, that the nostrils and other orifices are open,
and that the tendons in the decayed leg are visible, has not the
slightest foundation. Why was this image made? Why hidden? and
by whom? are questions which I must be excused from answering
at present. HENRY
THE BELIEF OF THE ONONDAGA INDIANS--THE BODY
OF AN INDIAN PROPHET.
To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal:--
In your columns devoted to "Letters from the People," I thought
you would at this time publish the following, it being interesting
as one of the current opinions of the Indians of "the Castle"
regarding the wonderful "human petrified statue," which, in its
colossal proportions and the sphynx-like silence of its history
is so electrifying and exciting the people.
By one of the old squaws I am told that a large number of Onondagas
believe that the statue is the petrified body of a gigantic Indian
prophet, who flourished many centuries ago, and who foretold the
coming of the pale-faces, though long before the foot of our
forefathers had touched the western continent. He warned his
people with prophetic fervor of the coming encroachments of the
white man, and the necessity of their abstinence from a poison
drink he would bring to craze and destroy them. He told them
that he should die and be buried out of their sight, but that THEIR
DESCENDANT WOULD SEE HIM--AGAIN. J.P. FOSTER, State Agent and
Teacher for the Onondaga Indians.