Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

were here in great number, and their cobwebs, stretched in all directions

and wreathing the great skinny dead together, were a pleasant spectacle,

since they inspired with life and wholesome cheer a scene which would

otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness and

desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They

were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their

language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid,

gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods.

The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them

the true religion, and in a week’s time a precious work had been wrought

among those darkened creatures, not three families being by that time at

peace with each other or having a settled belief in any system of

religion whatever. This encouraged the expedition to establish a colony

of missionaries there permanently, that the work of grace might go on.

But let us not outrun our narrative. After close examination of the

fronts of the caverns, and much thinking and exchanging of theories, the

scientists determined the nature of these singular formations. They said

that each belonged mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the

cavern fronts rose in innumerable and wonderfully regular strata high in

the air, each stratum about five frog-spans thick, and that in the

present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all received geology;

for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a thin layer of

decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old Red

Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred and

seventy-five! And by the same token it was plain that there had also

been a hundred and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of

limestone strata! The unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts was

the overwhelming truth that the world, instead of being only two hundred

thousand years old, was older by millions upon millions of years! And

there was another curious thing: every stratum of Old Red Sandstone was

pierced and divided at mathematically regular intervals by vertical

strata of limestone. Up-shootings of igneous rock through fractures in

water formations were common; but here was the first instance where

water-formed rock had been so projected. It was a great and noble

discovery, and its value to science was considered to be inestimable.

A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the

presence of fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their

peculiar goods), and with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon

the scientific record; for this was proof that these vulgar laborers

belonged to the first and lowest orders of created beings, though at the

same time there was something repulsive in the reflection that the

perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order owed its

origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of

Development of Species.

The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the

parvenus of these new times should find what comfort they might in their

wise-drawn theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to

be of the old first families and proud to point back to his place among

the old original aristocracy of the land.

“Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday’s

veneering, since you like it,” said he; “suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs

that they come of a race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the

solemn aisles of antiquity, and left their imperishable works embalmed in

the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the wasting centuries as they

file along the highway of Time!”

“Oh, take a walk!” said the chief of the eKpedition, with derision.

The summer passed, and winter approached. In and about many of the

caverns were what seemed to be inscriptions. Most of the scientists said

they were inscriptions, a few said they were not. The chief philologist,

Professor Woodlouse, maintained that they were writings, done in a

character utterly unknown to scholars, and in a language equally unknown.

He had early ordered his artists and draftsmen to make facsimiles of all

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