estimation of tlie same distinguished author, as well as of others, gives
no less satisfactory proof of the antiquity of the present relative
position of continents and oceans.
Dr. Bennet Dowler, of New Orleans, in an interesting essay,359
recently published, supplies some extraordinary facts in confirmation
of the great age of the delta of the Mississippi, assumed by Lyell,
Riddell, Carpenter, Forshey, and others. From an investigation of
the successive growths of cypress forests around that city, the stumps
of which are still found at different depths, directly overlying each other ;
from the great size and age of these trees, and from the remains of
Indian hones and pottery found below the roots of some of these
stumps, he arrives at the following conclusion: —
**' From these data it appears that the human race existed in the delta more than 57,000
years ago; and that ten subterranean forests, and the one now growing, will show that an
exuberant flora existed in Louisiana more than 100,000 years anterior to these evidences
of man’s existence.”
The delta of the Alabama river hears ample testimony to the same
effect. Along the Mobile river and hay we find certain shell-fish,
whose relative positions are determined at present, as they always
have been, by certain physical conditions, viz.: the unio and paludina,
the gnathodon, and the oyster. The first are always ■ found above
tide-water, where the water is perfectly fresh; the second flourishes in
brackish water alone; and the oyster never hut in water that is
almost salt. As the delta of the river has extended, they have each
greatly changed their habitats. The most northern habitat, at the present
day, for example, of the gnathodon, stands about Choctaw Point,
one mile below Mobile; whereas we have abundant evidence that it
formerly existed fifty miles above. The unio, paludina, and oyster
have changed positions in like manner.
Immense beds of gnathodon shells are found, and in the greatest
profusion, all along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where they
have doubtless been deposited by Indians in former times. Great
numbers of these beds exist on the Mobile hay, and along the river,
for fifty miles above the city, where only a scattering remnant of the
living species is still found. The Indians had no means for, and no
object in, transporting such an immense number fifty miles up the
river; and we must, therefore, conclude that the Mobile bay once extended
to the locality of these upper “ shell banks;” and that the
Indians had collected them for food, near where these banks are now
beheld. One strong evidence of this conclusion is gathered from the
fact, that the different artificial beds of the unio, the gnathodon, and
the oyster, are never here formed of a mixture of two or more shells;
which would be the case if their locations had been near each other.
That these beds are of Indian origin is clear, from the fact that the
shells have all been opened, and that we find in them the marks of
fire, extending over considerable spaces -^-the shells converted into
quick-lime, and mingled with charcoal, so that the' successive accumulations
of shells may he plainly traced.360 Fish-bones- and other
remains of Indian feasts are common: i. e. fragments of Indian pottery
; and of human bones, which can be identified by their crania.
Some of these beds are covered over by vegetable mould, from one
to two feet thick, which must have been a very long time forming;
and upon this are growing the largest forest trees, beneath whose
roots these Indian remains are often discovered. It is more than
probable, too, that these huge trees are the successors of -former
growths quite as large.
We cannot, by any conjecture, approximate, within many centuries,
perhaps thousands of years, the time consumed in thus extending
the delta of the Alabama river, and in producing the changes we
have hinted at; nor dare we attempt to fix the time at which the Red
men fed upon the gnathodons that compose the first beds to which we
have alluded.
It is worthy also of special remark that the gnathodon, of which
a few surviving specimens still endure along the Gulf coast of Florida,
Alabama, and Mississippi, was once a living species in the Chesapeake
bay; but has been so long extinct that it now exists there only in a
fossil state. This would extend the living fauna very much farther
back than the Chesapeake deposits: all our recent shells, or nearly
all, being found in the pliocene, and many shells in still earlier-formations.
Such facts, with many others of similar import, which might
be adduced, point to a chronology very far beyond any heretofore
received: and who will doubt that, when the Mississippi, Alabama,
and Niagara rivers first poured their waters into the ocean, a fauna
and a flora already existed? and, if so, why did not man exist?
They all belong to one geological period, and to one creation.
These authorities, in support of the extreme age of the geological
era to which man belongs, though startling to the unscientific, are
not simply the opinions of a few; but such conclusions are substantially
adopted by the leading geologists everywhere. And, although
antiquity so extreme for man’s existence on earth may shock some
preconceived opinions, it is none the less certain that the rapid accumulation
of new facts is fast familiarizing the minds of the scientific
world to this conviction. The monuments of Egypt have already
carried us far beyond all chronologies heretofore adopted; and when
these barriers are once overleaped, it is in vain for us to attempt to
approximate, even, the epoch of man’s creation. This conclusion is
35