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Baptist,' is typified anterior to our Saviour's publicity. But, though our modern travellers into the Mexican territories, seem to have overlooked every thing precious, excepting the Mining Shares, which have proved as abortive as the fable of the old woman and her goose with the golden egg. In Mr. Aglio's volumes will be found the most curious specimens of existing monuments, musical instruments, utensils, architectural fabrics of ruins, &c. worked most beautifully in lithography, and at once compatible with the best imitative art t

These valuable memorials of the Mexican people are dedicated to Lord Kingsborough,' and the text has been supplied by his lordship with much care. We cannot conclude our notice without once more giving the artist of this laborious but elegant production our grateful tribute; since we are sure, that the moment he completed his task, he must have felt proud of the achievement.‡

Mr. Taylor, speaking of the mines of Mexico, (1824) notices this circumstance of the Archbishop, having given Laborde permission to sell a golden sun enriched with diamonds, with which he had adorned the tabernacle of the church of Tasco, he with drew to Zacatecas with the produce of this sale, which amounted to £22,000 sterling. so entirely neglected, that it scarcely furnished 33,000lbs. troy annually to the mint at Mexico. Mr. Ackermann's companion prints of the city of Mexico, well executed in aqua tinta and coloured, convey the idea of its magnificence. Ward's Mexico' (1807) published 1828, treats of a new and successful system of working the mines, which has given employ

The district of mines of Zacatecas was then

ment to labourers and capitalists, by the formation of companies, many of whom have been indulged with golden dreams without realising golden harvests.

+ The unique specimen intended to be presented to His Majesty,' is worked with the pencil and pen on the most finished sheets of vellum, yet fabricated in the brightest colours, margined with gold lines, and the first successful trial of the lithographic art on skins in this style.

Of the many vols published on the South American Revolution, Mr. Robinson (1821) gives a characteristic idea of the costume of Mexican Officers, The grotesque figure of the colonel surprised the division. He wore a threadbare round about brown jacket, decorated with a quantity of tarnished silver lace and a red waistcoat; his shirt collar fancifully cut and embroidered was flying open, and a black silk handkerchief was hanging loosely about his neck. He also wore a pair of short, loose, rusty, olive.coloured velveteen breeches, also decorated with lace, and round his legs were wrapped a pair of dressed deer skins tied under the knee by a garter. He had on a pair of country-made shoes, and on each beel was a tremendous iron spur, inlaid with silver, weighing nearly a pound, with rowels four inches in diameter. On his head was placed a country-made hat, with an eight inch brim, ornamented with a broad silver band, in the front of which was stuck a large picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, inclosed

MOSAIC GEOLOGY.

BY J. F. PENNIE, ESQ.

For the Olio.

Concluded from page 379.

REMARKABLE as the appearance of this rock-wood undoubtedly is, a still more surprising phenomena makes its appearance between the second and third strata, viz. a bed of dark grey schistus, about four inches in thickness, which admits of being divided into numerous thin plates, many of which possess the tenuity of the finest writing paper, and discovers on both sides the most beautiful and accurate impressions of leaves, with all their ramifications of nerves, ribs, and fibres, in the best state of preservation. The whole of the schistose body is, in fact, nothing but an accumulation of leaves closely pressed together, and partially inlaid with a fine alluvial clay. Most of the specimens now before me are of the common poplar, (populus tremula), and some of them, in the judgment of an eminent botanical gentleman, Professor Horneman, of Copenhagen, appear to be of the populus takkamahaka. A few birch and willow leaves are also observable, but very small in size, whereas many of the poplar leaves are upwards of three inches in breadth. From a specimen seen by Sir George Mackenzie, he concluded it to be oak, but Professor Berogman says, "I can affirm with perfect certainty that of two of these specimens sent to me, the largest is of the pinus abies."

We would ask Mr. Penn if these poplars, oaks, and pines, grew also in the antediluvian ocean, as they are embedded with the coal which that gentleman says was sea-weed. How comes it to pass, also, if our MOSAIC GEOLOGIST be right, that in the marble quarries of the Island

by a frame and protected by a glass. He was mounted on a fine horse, and armed with a brace of pistols, a Spanish toledo and an immensely long lance. His men were equipped much in the same style, but were principally clad and armed with the spoils taken from the enemy.

A writer of a description of Mexico' bas enumerated nine different places, where the waters which flow into the Atlantic might possibly be connected with those which flow into the Pacific.

Guatemala, (says Don Domingo Juanos, 1823,) receives its name from the word quanhtemali, which, in the Mexican language, means a decayed log of wood; because the Mexican Indians, who accompanied Alvarado, found near the court of the kings of Kachiquel, an old worm-eaten tree, and gave this name to the capital.

In the province of Sacatepeques there are several volcanoes, particularly one, called the Water Volcano, which is the most lofty in the kingdom.

of Portland, among numerous petrifactions of testaceous and finny animals, the remains, according to Mr. Penn, of the antediluvian sea, such numbers of rocktrees are also found, whose branches, roots, bark, and grain, all prove them to have once grown and flourished on dry land?

On the whole, we consider this theory of the MOSAIC GEOLOGIST to be the most unphilosophical, improbable, and unMosaical in its grand leading points, that has ever appeared! That it has its admirers, besides the author, we have no doubt; but we should certainly prefer the hypothesis of Welch, which of the two is by far the least opposed to the Mosaic account, the most ancient record we have existing, and at the same time far more consonant to the laws of reason and nature, and even to those incontrovertible remains of once sub-marine substances, still to be found in every part of the globe.

We cannot, however, allow Mr. Welch the merit of originality; for, to say nothing of the Wernerian system, Thales, the ancient Greek philosopher, considered water to be the origin of all things, and to which they ultimately returned. It is true, this is not going quite so far back as the gases for primitive matter, as Mr. Welch has done. The ancient Phoenicians also asserted water to be the first of all created things, from whom it is probable that the British or Celtic Druids learnt to pay such veneration to lakes and rivers. And there is a tradition, says Sir William Jones, mentioned by the inquisitive and well-informed Plato, that both Saturn or Time, and his consort Cybele or the Earth, together with their attendants, were the children of Ocean and Thetis, or, in less poetical language, sprang from the WATERS OF THE GREAT

DEEP.

-

That those vast beds of marine depositions and rocks of shell-marble found almost every where, could not have been formed by the Mosaic Deluge, is quite as clear as that the ocean has never yet changed places, since its formation, with the earth; for, to use the words of Welch, "we read that the high hills under the whole heaven were covered, and that the Ark rested on Mount Ararat; consequently those mountains were previously formed, and marine productions being found in them, prove, to a demonstration, that they had been deposited there before that event. Supposing that a Deluge was to happen in our day, and to remain on the earth for the space of one year, we can scarcely imagine that shells would be found by future generations at

a great distance from the sea, testacious animals not having the power of migrating, and particularly the limpit, which is at all times attached to the rock."

To corroborate this still further, we shall make a quotation from a learned author of considerable repute :—

"We are informed," says he, "by almost every traveller that has described the pyramids of Egypt, that one of them is entirely built of a kind of freestone, in which petrified sheils are found in great abundance: this being the case, it may be affirmed, as we have accounts of these pyramids among the earliest records of mankind; and of their being built so long before the age of Herodotus, who lived but fifteen hundred years after the flood, that even the Egyptian priests could tell neither the time, nor the cause of their erection; I say it may be affirmed that they were erected but a short time after the flood; it is not very likely, therefore, that the marine substances found in one of them could have had time to be formed into a part of the solid stone, either during the Deluge, or immediately after, and consequently their petrifaction must have been before that period."

Once more, and we have done with Mr. Penn for the present. He asserts, as we have already shown, that the antediluvian earth is now at the bottom of our present ocean, while GABB affirms that those very pyramids, one of which is built of petrified shells, were erected BEFORE THE FLOOD. If this be the case, and his arguments, or rather FACTS, are ingenious and forcible, here is another death-blow to the silly dreamings of Mr. Penn. That we may not be laughed out of countenance for echoing such an opinion, we shall copy a few of Gabb's powerful reasons, and let those contradict him who can ;-we wish to elicit

TRUTH.

"At the time Herodotus reported the length of the side of the base of the great pyramid to be 800 feet (proved about to be of the standard chest, and equal to 583 feet of ours,) all will agree that he dug not, like the French of late, through the sands in search of the exact length of the foundations of a pile which he was led to believe to be a sepulchral monument; but only measured on the adventitious surface, and that probably to no great exactness, but thought a few feet of no such consequence as to spoil the round number 800 by inserting them. Now, if the surface had continued to rise by the incessant arrival of sand, as about 2000 years after Herodotus, Mr. Greaves, pro

* Finis Pyramidis, by the Rev. T. Gabb.

fessor of astronomy, most accurately measured the side of the base also on the adventitious surface, he must have necessarily found from 2000 years' accumulation of sand against the acclining sides a much less length of side than Herodotus records, whereas he made the length 693 feet English, which exceeds it by 100 feet. And the learned admit that we may depend on the veracity of Herodotus in such matters as fell under his cognizance, and who can deny Mr. Greaves an equal character ? The inference then may be fairly drawn, that the winds in those regions have been imperceptibly stripping the sand-covered sides of this pyramid for at least 2000 years, instead of increasing the accumulation."

But by what agency, is the question? Most have taken it for granted, without further investigation, they have been brought by the winds, and indeed we read of wonderful effects thus produced in those regions of the earth. But where do we ever read of these phenomena becoming stationary even for a day? Common observation teaches us that fine sands and pulverized earth are invariably driven by the winds from higher ground and summits, and lodged in vales. All readers and travellers know that the surface whereon the pyramid stands is the summit of an extensive ground, a covered rock, at a sufficient distance from the mountains of Lybia to give the winds free access to the scite whereon the pyramid is built; and it is directly contrary to common experience to attribute the deposit of sand to the agency of the wind, since the removal of it is rather the natural and invariable effect of that agitated element. And that this has been the case with the sands deposited about the pyramid, the altitude of them at the time of Herodotus, and the lesser altitude of them when Mr. Greaves visited the pyramid is a proof.

But if this deposite of sand be not the effect of the winds, by what agency came it there? Not by the extraordinary overflowing of the Nile, from which a sediment might be left, for it is known that river never rose to near the height of that plain of rock, nor are there any kind of shell-fish in the Nile; whereas shells and petrified oysters are found in the sands about the pyramids.

And it must be allowed when this pyramid of Giza was built, there were no such depths either of sands or earth upon the rock, as in the time of Herodotus, from the absurdities that would follow such a supposition; since the builders must first have dug out then depth of sand equal in extent to twelve English acres, and when their work was completed, it

must be argued that they filled in against the acclining sides to the level of the former surface, and thus have buried a considerable portion of their own work.

From these positions it evidently ap pears this pyramid must have been erected by the ANTEDILUVIANS, and the universal Deluge called Noah's Flood, and the description given of it in holy writ, will account in a satisfactory manner for the lodgment of sands on the surface of that extensive rock.

These sands, on the subsiding of the waters, were probably very near the summit of the pyramid; nor do I doubt but the apex was revised from it by the impetuosity of the waters, while in their unabated rapidity, and thus left the flat, which has furnished various conjectures. It is natural to conclude that heavier particles of sand, when the waters became tranquil, would sink first, and the lighter particles, both on account of their texture as well as their more exposed situation, would easily pulverize, and be sooner conveyed by the winds to distant parts, than the ponderous compressed layers, intermixed with shells and portions of loam, which more immediately covered the sides of the pyramid nearest to the rock. Of course the reduction of this consolidated mass has been by slow degrees, and its dispersion by the winds so imperceptible as to defeat observation.

Hence it may have easily come to pass, that the visitors of this pyramid, who became its historians, might judge the sands, which encompass the pyramid on every side, and extend over the plain, were either the natural coat, or at most increased by an accession of sand brought by the winds; and the deception, concealed by these apparently natural effects, could only be detected by some such experiment as I have herein suggested, viz. the comparing of dimensions taken at very distant periods. But if any should be so sceptically inclined as to question this upon the mere possibility that Greaves or Herodotus, or both, may have erred in their dimensions, and may have differed above one hundred feet from each other, they cannot expect to find credit if they pretend the winds have brought the present accumulation; for who ever read of winds that imperceptibly conveyed fish-shells and petrified oysters to such a distance? Now the present strata, taken at the altitude of 31 feet, would produce an excavation equal to 611,177 cubic yards, which the builders, according to the sceptics, must have had to dig out and clear away; a task altogether as incredible as the supposition of the conveyance of shells by the wind is absurd.

We have quoted thus largely because we believe the work itself but little known. We fancy it would be very difficult for Mr. Penn to overthrow Gabb's theory respecting this antediluvian pyramid, his arguments being founded on absolute facts and measurements. Nor can he get rid of this huge obstacle in his usual way, for this Pyramid all mankind will testify is no modern gloss, it proudly stands, and will ever stand, a part of the true text in the architectonic history of the world, an incontestible proof of its high antiquity.

Thus far we have knocked a few of the leading points of two of our modern theories of the earth, supposed by their authors to be firmly founded on the Bible, against each other; and behold they are broken to pieces, and dashing the rock of their boasted foundation on the fragments, they are become pulverized into dust!Let their builders set them up again, if they can, as soon as they please.

The real fact is :-There has been no theory whatever yet produced which accords either with the present appearances of nature, or the Mosaic account of the creation. It has been proved that the ocean never did, nor ever could change places with the earth, while Moses flatly gives the lie to such a preposterous supposition. The present appearances of the earth prove beyond all possible doubt that it is full of marine remains, and these, for the most part, have ever been in the very same situations, undergoing their stony changes, in which they are at the present hour, from the first formation, or rather modification of the present globe. These marine productions of vegetables, shells, and fishes with fins, of which many mountains are almost wholly composed, could not, by any possibility, have been embedded in the earth and turned into stone, without having first been produced in and supported by the sea; and that by LONG AND SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS. For instance," The Glassoptra, or the teeth of sharks and other fishes, are found in their jaws, polished and worn smooth at the extremities, consequently must have been made use of during the animal's life; and in shells the very pearls are found which the living animals of the same kind produce. It is well known that the Purpura and Pholades have a long pointed proposcis, which serves them as a kind of gimblet or drill to pierce the shells of living fish, on whose flesh they feed; now shells thus pierced are found in the earth, which is another incontestible proof that they heretofore enclosed living fish, and that these fish inhabited places where the Purpura and Pholades preyed on them."

;

"In Switzerland, Asia, and Africa, travellers have observed petrified fish in many places; for instance, on the mountains of Castravan there is a bed of white laminated stone, and each lamina contains a great number and diversity of fishes they are, for the most part, very flat, and extremely compressed, in the manner of fossil fern, yet they are so well preserved, that the minutest marks of their fins and scales are distinguishable, and every other part, whereby one species of fish is known from another." "M. de Reaumar gives an account of an immense bed of oysters which contains 130,630,000 cubic fathoms; this vast mass of marine bodies is in Touraine, at upwards of thirty-six leagues from the sea; among these shells are blended some fragments of the more strong parts of sea plants, such as madripores, fungi marini, &c.

Amid the stupendous cliffs of Cheddar, in Somersetshire, far remote from the ocean, are to be found many marine remains.

It then plainly appears, by facts against which no arguments can for a moment stand their ground, that whatever change or modification of our globe took place, according to Moses, six thousand years ago, matter, or the material of which the present world is composed, had a preexistence unknown ages anterior to that wonderful period. This Welch, the prior Mosaic Geologist, asserts, though not at all agreeable, we think, with the modern discovery of osseous remains.

In an historical work by W. Mavor, LL.D., he says, "It requires two thousand years and upwards to form a scanty bed of earth on a surface of lava." Now seven distinct strata of lava, each covered with a thick bed of rich earth, have been sunk through near Jaci, Mount Etna consequently, reasoning from analogy, the lowest stratum, must have flowed upwards of fourteen thousand years ago!

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Again, we would enquire, what is sand produced from? Any man of the least science will answer, it is formed by rains, storms, frosts, and waters incessantly wearing down the rocks, till they become pulverized into the smallest particles. If such be the case, which no one we should suppose will deny, whence came the countless sands that overspread the immense desarts of Tartary, the plains of Arabia, the vast and pathless wilds of the burning Zaahara, and the horrid desarts of Makran, twenty thousand leagues in circumference? Can these be the production of two thousand years from the creation to the flood?-granting the ocean changed places with the earth. Could those agents by which these prodigious

regions of minute particles (not to mention the sands of the ocean) were produced, wear down the rocks in the longer though comparatively short period of six thousand years? How weak, how unphilosophical, is such an absurd supposition.

There is, in fact, only one theory which can be reconciled to the appearances of the present world, and the discoveries of modern geology, connected with those remains of monstrous animals which have existed in some far remote periods of time -which is, that the present globe is but a new modification, or rather the wreck and ruins (as Bishop Burnet says), of a FORMER WORLD.t Olbers and other great astronomers have been of a similar opinion. The fossil bones, brought to light after numerous ages of inhumation, of immense animals, terrific beasts of prey, which no force of man, in his present state, could resist, and giants of the most enormous proportions, silence all the vain babbling of theorists, the most subtle arguments the wit of man ever produced, and all the idle doubtings of phy

ronism.

There has very lately been discovered in America the fossil remains of a most enormous animal, the jaw-bone of which measured twenty feet in length, and weighed twelve hundred pounds weight! several vertebræ were also found six inches in diameter, along which there is an oval passage for the spinal marrow nine inches by six, and some ribs, nine feet long! This monster as far surpassed the ancient mammoth in size, as the modern elephant surpasses the mouse!

There has also been discovered in the Craigleith quarries, near Edinburgh, a gigantic fossil plant, a member of the Cyperaceae, or some other family of the Monocotyledonous tribe, whose stem was thirty-six feet in length, and which at the base was nine feet in circumference.

It is worse than absurd to suppose that these vast monsters, with the mastodon armed with its prodigious claws, and forty or fifty other gigantic species which Cuvier has discovered, the greater part of them beasts of prey, could belong to the antediluvian any more than to the present world. They must have been out of all proportion to such a globe, and every thing in it. They would have soon created a total destruction throughout the animal kingdoms, and man, who, in the ear

+ We do not mean to say, as the Bishop does, in his wild, impossible, but amusing theory, that this wreck is the result of the Deluge.

We could fill pages with notes drawn from the highest authorities, ancient and modern,

lier ages of the world, as they are called, at least when without the aid of fire-arms, could not possibly have coped with such terrific strength, must have fallen before them, and have also become extinct.

That there was in unknown periods a vegetable kingdom of proportionate magnitude with these monsters of the animal seems pretty clear. What the state of existence has been is buried for ever in the wonderful mysteries of the PAST.— That gigantic animals of the human and the brutal form have dwelt on this globe in ages far remote from the present, no one of the least pretensions to knowledge will now dare to deny. That the antediluvian state of things was adapted to their production and existence, is as absurd as to suppose them inhabitants of the present earth, and cotemporary with ourselves.

The sublime wreck of nature is around us on every side, and a vast portion of that wreck once moved instinct with life, feeling, and passion, in various forms of beauty, grandeur, and terror, of which we can no more shape a just conception than the ephemeral of a day, that lives and dies on a leaf of the forest flower, can of the departed splendour and power of a Babylon or a Thebes! Rogvald Cottage.

ADIEU!

An adieu should in utterance die,
When written should faintly.appear;
Only heard in the breath of a sigh,
Only read in the blot of a tear.

Origins,

For the Olio.

"The Secrets of the Prison House."

The

In ancient times the Chaldeans kept a piece of ground for the punishment and employment of a certain class of prisoners. In it was dug a dungeon, and a mill erected below the prison house. prisoners, however, finding themselves so closely watched, contrary to their inclination, began to revolt: it was, therefore, deemed necessary for their protection that passes should be built, which so far prevented the prisoners from being pub licly recognised, and these passes were called the secrets or private places of the prison house, or house of the pit.

The Court of Three Men.

This court was anciently formed of three men in the capacity of inferior ma

to prove the discovery of the most gigantic gistrates, each of whom was to possess

human remains.

these seven things :-Wisdom, meekness,

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