The fountains, aqueducts, the heavy domes, and the long graceful
obelisks, rising at the feet of massive pyramids, show indubitably the
long presence of a highly civilized people; and the Shoshones' accounts
of these mysterious relics may serve to philosophers as a key to the
remarkable facts of thousands of similar ruins found everywhere upon the
continent of America. The following is a description of events at a very
remote period, which was related by an old Shoshone sage, in their
evening encampment in the prairies, during the hunting season:--

"It is a long, long while! when the wild horses were unknown in the
country[7], and when the buffalo alone ranged the vast prairies then
huge and horrid monsters existed. The approaches of the mountains and
forests were guarded by the evil spirits[8], while the seashore,
tenanted by immense lizards,[9] was often the scene of awful conflicts
between man, the eldest son of light, and the mighty children of gloom
and darkness. Then, too, the land we now live in had another form;
brilliant stones were found in the streams; the mountains had not yet
vomited their burning bowels, and the great Master of Life was not angry
with his red children.

[Footnote 7: Horses were unknown until the arrival of the Spaniards.]

[Footnote 8: Skeletons of the mammoth are often found whole at the foot
of the Grand Serpent, a long rugged mountain which runs for 360 miles
under the parallel of 40 degrees north latitude. It extends from the
centre of the Shoshone territory to the very country of the Crows, that
is to say, from the 119th to the 113th degree west longitude. It is
possible that this race may not have been yet quite extinct in the
middle of the 17th century; for, indeed, in their family records, aged