The following letter from Prof. Henry A. Ward appears in the
Rochester Democrat, and will be found to be well worthy of perusal.
Prof. Ward takes high rank among the scientific men of the country,
and an opinion from him is certainly entitled to respectful
consideration:--
EDITOR DEMOCRAT--I have just returned from a hasty visit to the
colossal statue, or "Fossil Giant," as many have called it, which
is now causing so great an excitement in our sister city, Syracuse,
and in all the country for many score of miles around.
This great archeological wonder is located in the Onondaga Valley,
on the west side, about three-quarters of a mile from the village
of Cardiff. The valley itself is one of erosion, dating its birth
to the time when the gradual rise of our continent from beneath
the ocean's waves had subjected all this portion of our State to
the fierce furrowing and deep denuding action of violent currents
of water, aided in their work by floating masses of ice and by
rock debris carried by and often frozen into these masses. For
about twelve miles south from Syracuse the valley is quite narrow,
but here the hills recede on either side and sweep widely around
in two high crescent-like ranges to meet again (or nearly so) at
a point three or four miles higher up the stream. Within the sort
of amphitheater thus formed, and at the foot of the western hill,
is the farm of Mr. Newell. His house and outbuildings lie at the
edge of the slope, and touching a low meadow which extends for a
hundred yards or more to the bushy margin of a creek beyond. A
smaller stream or a branch of this same appears at one time to
have run close to the hill, leaving faint traces of its contour
on the meadow, and one small elliptical swale or soft, boggy spot,
a few yards across, near the lower corner of Mr. Newell's barn.
It was while digging a shallow pit in this swale that the relic
was found. It is a gigantic human figure lying on its back, with
its head to the east and feet to the west. The head is in the
position commonly given to a corpse; the right arm extends downwards,
with the hand and fingers spread stiffly across the abdomen; the
left arm bends down along the left side, with the hand quite under
the middle line of the body; the left hip is raised a trifle, the thigh
and leg more so, so as to bring the lower part of the left leg and
foot obliquely across and over the same parts on the right. The
posture is in all one that a dying body left to itself might naturally
assume. The entire length of the figure is ten feet two and a half
inches, and the other parts of the body are proportionately colossal.
Its head is of a very elongated type, but well shaped, and with
a countenance full of solemn, dignified composure. The features
are purely Caucasian, having neither the high cheek bones of the
Indian, nor any other facial outlines which mark the type of other
Aztec aborigines.
To describe the appearance of this great figure as being strange
and impressive is saying too little.
Lying as it still does, in its original earthy bed, its grey massive
form hardly yet still from the struggles by which it seems to have
freed itself, and the face, body and limbs still damp with the
ooze of its low sepulchre, it possesses the beholder with a feeling
of extremest awe and profoundest wonder. To interrupt these
emotions by speculations as to its personality, to approach this
majestic figure with the calm processes of scrutinizing investigation,
seems a sacrilege. All one's feelings persuade to accept it as a
real human being, once instinct with life and activity, now a noble
corpse. The proprietors of the giant figure, or statue, as we
shall now call it, use all due effort to strengthen this feeling,
and enlarge the belief that their wonderful discovery is really a
petrified human being--a genuine" Fossil Man" preserved entire,
with flesh and bones changed to stone in the very place where he
fell at death, or possibly was buried by his coevals of an olden
time. All opportunities of close examination are refused; indeed,
the present throng of visitors would make such general permission
impracticable. The little, darkened tent, and the pit shaded by
a triple row of spectators, whose heads almost touch across it in
their earnest efforts to see the body below, made it quite impossible
for me to obtain that thorough acquaintance with the huge object
which I would have liked. But I saw enough in the fifteen minutes
(only) which are allowed to each set of visitors within the tent
to fully satisfy myself of the true nature of the figure.
The "Onondaga Giant" is the work of the sculptor, and out of a
single large block of the gypseous limestone (an upper member of
the "Onondaga Salt Group") which forms large beds in the immediate
vicinity. This stone is very strongly marked by lines of deposition,
causing bands of different shades extending in horizontal layers,
perfectly even and parallel through large quarry masses. In the
present in stance these layers are so disposed--in the way the
sculptor chose his block--as to cut lengthwise through the whole
body, and to mark off different leads over the entire figure. Thus
the left hip and left breast present (cameo-like) a layer different
and higher than the one which forms the corresponding parts on
the right side of the body. The head, too, with its different
elevation of chin, nose and forehead, is very strongly marked in
the same way. These linings are well-known peculiarities in the
original deposition of a stratified rock, and are not features
assumed in the petrifaction of any organic body. Further
peculiarities of the Onondaga gypsum are very noticeable in the
block, and among them is the peculiar style of decomposition
by which the whole lower part of the figure is affected, as also
one side of its head. Here the soluble earths, with any portions
of carbonate of lime, have been dissolved away, and the pure
granular sulphate (snowy gypsum) remains, standing up with ragged,
uneven, cavernous surfaces, which is a feature very noticeable
everywhere in weather-worn fragments of this rock. This
decomposition or rotting of the lower side of the left leg gives
a very vivid semblance to the corruption of actual flesh, and has
doubtless had much to do with the ready reception which the
"petrifaction" theory has found among the mass of visitors--even
including many men of intelligence and general education. If such
persons will refer to works which treat of petrifaction in all
their various kinds of transformation and in all the thousand
genera and species of fossil organisms, they will find that
although bones, shells, and the hard parts of animals, changed to
stone, yet preserving their original outlines, are of constant
occurrence, yet there is not a single instance on record of fossil
flesh; of the fat, muscle or sinew of man or beast changed into
stone or into any substance resembling stone. To a person
acquainted with the nature of petrifaction, the slow substitution
of mineral for animal matter, particle by particle, the reason
why humor of other flesh does not undergo the same change will be
apparent. This is truly not entirely in accordance with popular
belief, nor with the ever-recurring stories in our public journals.
"A fish nearly a foot long, petrified to solid stone" has lately
been cited in your columns as another instance of the petrifactions
of the Onondaga Valley. I visited this yesterday at the Museum
of the Onondaga Historical Society, at Syracuse, and found (what
I had before surely surmised,) a simple, short, club-like fragment
of limestone, worn by running water to a form like a little fish.
"This it was and nothing more."
It is proposed--and very properly--that this Onondaga relic should
be submitted to the examination of Professor Hall, Agassiz, Leidz,
or some other of our geologists known to fame and infallible experts
in these matters. This were well. But there is another court which
I think, would pass quite as prompt a decision. I believe that a
sculptor, in examining this most singular specimen, would at once
recognize its artificial character. The devices for saving time
or for adding strength, partially cutting out the figure, are
sufficiently apparent in the object before us. The legs--with
their heavy thigh, the swollen knee portion, the swollen calf and
slender ankle, all touch on the outline length as they lie over
each other, with no open space between, or no point where one
folds down upon the other with a sharp line of contact of the two
surfaces. The same thing, too, is noticeable in the arms and in
the fingers of the hand, where the flesh, instead of sloping away--
one rounded surface finely leaving another--is cut down square,
as if some unnatural out growth of flesh had formed a uniting
portion beneath the member. This is a too common device in
the coarser grades of sculpture to escape notice here. Our
sculptor would certainly find fault with the very constrained
position of the body, its feet awkwardly crossed and its left
arm twisted rather than laid backward under its body, certainly
this is not the attitude in which a sculptor--a man of taste--would
place his handiwork. Still, may it not be an admissable theory,
that the oldtime artist was constrained in the form which he should
give his statue, by the form and dimensions of his gypsum block.
If there was not material sufficient to carve out both arms lying
across the breast, he might find enough to make one of the arms
below. If the lower left hand corner of the block were broken off,
he might still bring out both feet by lapping one over the other, and
letting vertical space atone for lateral want of it. If our sculptor,
finally, will look sharply upon the legs and body in such parts as
have escaped the considerable water-wearing which has smoothed
most of the figure, I think that he will see plainly the marks of the
graving tool of his ancient colleague. But, as he now has the figure
in charge--I positively rejecting it as being no fossil--I will leave to
him and the Archeologist to study and puzzle upon it. Dr. J.F.
Boynton, of Syracuse, (to whom, by the way, belongs the credit
of having first discerned and recorded in print that this is a statue),
says, "I think that this piece of reclining statuary is not 300 years old,
but is the work of the early Jesuit Fathers in this country, who
are known to have frequented the Onondaga valley from 220 to 250
years ago; that it would probably bear a date in history
corresponding with the monumental stone which was found at Pompey
Hill in this county, and now deposited in the Academy at Albany.
All these are points which Archaeologists and Ethnologists may yet
determine. Will not Hon. Lewis H. Morgan leave Rochester by an
early Monday train and see this most wonderful statue while it is
still undisturbed in its bed. H. A. WARD. ROCHESTER,
October 23, 1869.