draining of the Haarlem Lake by the government of Holland in
1853, which shows that even favorable circumstances do not
always preserve remains for future inspection. Though called a
lake, this body of water was an arm of the sea, covering about
forty-five thousand acres. The population which had lived on the
shores of the lake was between thirty and forty thousand souls.
"There had been many a shipwreck, and many a naval fight on
those waters, and hundreds of Dutch and Spanish soldiers and
sailors had met there with a watery grave," yet not a solitary
portion of the human skeleton was to be found in its bed.<44>
Thus we see that, in the majority of cases, we must rely on
other evidence than the presence of human bones to prove the
existence of man in the geological periods of the past. In the
case of the Haarlem Lake again, there was found the wreck of one
or two vessels, and some ancient armor. So, had it been a
disputed point whether man was a denizen of this planet at the
time when the area in question was covered by water, it would
have been settled beyond a doubt by these relics of his
industry, even though portions of the human frame itself were
entirely wanting. And, in reality, proofs of this nature are
just as satisfactory as it would be to discover human bones.
If, on a desert island, we find arrow-heads, javelins, a place
where there had been a fire, split bones, and other
debris of a feast, we are as much justified in asserting
that man had been there, as we would be had we seen him with our
own eyes. In the same manner, if we detect in any strata of the
past any undoubted products of human industry--such as weapons,
or implements and ornaments--in such position that we know they
could not have been deposited there since the formation of the
bed itself, we have no hesitancy in asserting that man himself