Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/780

760 some distance from the original bottom of the pit on a platform of logs, while at his feet lie a number of strange stone and copper implements—some thin and sharp like knives and hatchets, others huge and blunt like mauls and hammers—all being left in such a manner as though the workman had but just gone to dinner and might be expected back at any moment. Bewildered, he ascends to the surface again and looks about him. He sees mounds that from their positions are evidently formed from the refuse of the pit, but these mounds are covered with gigantic trees, evidently the growth of centuries; and, looking still closer, he sees that these trees are fed from the decayed ruins of trees still older—trees that have sprung up, flourished, grown old, and died since this pit was dug or these mounds were raised. The more he thinks of the vast ages that have elapsed since this pit was dug, that mass of copper quarried and raised, the more confused he becomes: his mind can not grasp this immensity of time.

"Who were these miners? When did they live, and where did they come from?" are the questions he asks himself, but gets no answer. However, one fact is patent to him—that, whoever they were, they will not now trouble his claim; and, consoled by this reflection, he goes to work again.

The traveler in wandering through the dense and almost impenetrable forests of Central and South America, suddenly finds himself upon a broad and well-paved road, but a road over which in places there have grown trees centuries old. Curiously following this road, he sees before him, as though brought thither by some Aladdin's lamp, a vast city, a city built of stone—buildings that look at a distance like our large New England factories—splendid palaces and aqueducts, all constructed with such massiveness and grandeur as to compel a cry of astonishment from the surprised traveler—an immense but deserted city, whose magnificent palaces and beautiful sculpturing are inhabited and viewed only by the iguana and centiped. The roads and paths to the aqueducts, once so much traveled as to have worn hollows in the hard stone, are now trodden only by the ignorant mestizo or simple Indian. Of this deserted home of a lost race, the traveler asks the same question as the miner, and the only answer he gets from the semi-civilized Indian is a laconic "Quien sabe?" And who does know?

The curious and scientific world, however, are not so easily answered, and various are the theories and conjectures as to these diggers of mines and builders of mounds and strange cities. One of the most plausible of these—one believed by many scientists to be the true theory—is this: Ages ago the Americas presented a very different appearance from what they now do. Then an immense peninsula extended itself from Mexico, Central America, and New Granada, so far into the Atlantic that Madeira, the Azores, and the West India Islands are now fragments of it. This peninsula was a fair and fertile country inhabited by rich and civilized nations, a people versed in the arts