Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/89

 too, are the pestle and mortar,—those ancient forms and symbols older than the plow or the spade. The invention of the plow, which now turns them up, marks the era of their burial,—an era which can never have its history,—which is older or more primitive than history itself.

These are relics of an era older than modern civilization; compared with which Greece and Rome and Egypt are modern. And still the savage retreats and the white man advances. Some of these implements deserve notice for the constancy with which they occur, and their uniformity wherever found. They are part of the history of the Indian, and identified with his life. These slowly wrought, durable, and widely dispersed forms in stone mark the prevalent peculiarities and permanent customs of the red man. Many of them are symbols which cannot be interpreted at this day. A small pear-shaped implement of stone, two or three inches long, with a short neck, is found everywhere; its use is unknown.

In one instance the surface of a corn-field, plowed in an unusually dry and windy [41]