Читать книгу Bill Nye and Boomerang. Or, The Tale of a Meek-Eyed Mule, and Some Other Literary Gems - Nye Bill - Страница 8

During my rambles through the Medicine Bow Range of the Rocky mountains recently, I was shown by an old frontiersman a mound which, although worn down somewhat and torn to pieces by the buffalo, the antelope and the coyote, still bore the appearance of having been at one time very large and high.

This, I was told, had, no doubt, been the burial place of some ancient tribe or race of men, the cemetery, perhaps, of a nation now unknown.

Here in the heart of a new world, where men who had known the region for fifteen or twenty years, are now called "old timers," where "new discoveries" had been made within my own recollection, we found the sepulchre of a nation that was old when the Pilgrims landed on the shores of Columbia.

I am something of an antiquarian with all my numerous charms, and I resolved to excavate at this spot and learn the hidden secrets of those people who lived when our earth was young.

I started to dig into the vast sarcophagus. The ground was very hard. The more I worked the more I felt that I was desecrating the burial place of a mighty race of men, now powerless to defend themselves against the vandal hands that sought to mar their eternal slumber.

I resolved to continue my researches according to the

Vicarious plan. I secured the services of a hardened, soulless hireling, who did not wot of the solemn surroundings, and who could dig faster than I could. He proceeded with the excavation business, while I sought a shady dell where I could weep alone.

It was a solemn thought, indeed. I murmured softly to myself —

Just then a wood-tick ran up one of my alabaster limbs about nine feet, made a location and began to do some work on it under the United States mining laws.

I removed him by force and submitted him to the dry crushing process between a piece of micaceous slate and a fragment of deodorized, copper-stained manganese.

But we were speaking of the Aztecs, not the woodticks.

Nothing on earth is old save by comparison. The air we breathe and which we are pleased to call fresh air, is only so comparatively. It is the same old air. As a recent air it is not so fresh as "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

It has been in one form and another through the ever shifting ages all along the steady march of tireless time, but it is the same old union of various gaseous elements floating through space, only remodeled for the spring trade.

All we see or hear or feel, is old. Truth itself is old. Old and falling into disuse, too. Outside of what I am using in my business, perhaps, not over two or three bales are now on the market.

Here in the primeval solitude, undisturbed by the foot of man, I had found the crumbling remnants of those who once walked the earth in their might and vaunted their strength among the powers of their world.

No doubt they had experienced the first wild thrill of all powerful love, and thought that it was a new thing. They had known, with mingled pain and pleasure, when they struggled feebly against the omnipotent sway of consuming passion, that they were mashed, and they flattered themselves that they were the first in all the illimititable range of relentless years who had been fortunate enough to get hold of the genuine thing. All others had been base imitations.

Here, perhaps, on this very spot, the Aztec youth with a bright eyed maiden on his arm had pledged life-long fidelity to her shrine, and in the midnight silence had stolen away from her with a pang of vigorous regret, followed by the sobs of his soul's idol and the demoralizing, leaden rain of buckshot, with the compliments and best wishes of the old man.

While I was meditating upon these things a glad shout from the scene of operations attracted my attention. I rose and went to the scene of excavation, and found, to my unspeakable astonishment and pleasure, that the man had unearthed a large Queen Anne tear jug, with Etruscan work upon the exterior. It was simply one of the old-fashioned single-barrelled tear jugs, made for a one-eyed man to cry into. The vessel was about eighteen inches in height by five or six inches in diameter, and similar to the cut above.

The graceful yet perhaps severe pottery of the Aztecs convinces me that they were fully abreast of the present century in their knowledge of the arts and sciences.

Space will not admit of an extended description of this ancient tear cooler, but I am still continuing the antiquarian researches – vicariously, of course, – and will give this subject more attention during the summer.