an ancient causeway, of the existence of which there was of course not the most remote suspicion. The cedar piles, by which the sides were supported, were still sound at heart. Three feet below the edge of this ancient work, in what may have been the very ditch, they struck upon the entire skeleton of a mastodon, imbedded in the blue clay. Many of the most valuable bones were lost by the careless manner in which they were extricated; others were ground to powder on their conveyance to the capital, but sufficient remained to prove that the animal had been of great size. My informant measured the diameter of the tusk, and found it to be eighteen inches.
The number of the remains of this huge animal found on the table land of Mexico, and in the valley itself, is astonishing. Indeed, wherever extensive excavations have been made of late years, they have been amost always met with.
In digging the foundations of the present great church at Guadaloupe, many were brought to the surface. Mr. W. of the Hacienda of San Nicholas, four leagues to the south, in forming an excavation for an engine house, found others. A friend of mine in the capital received, while we were there, portions of a skeleton from Guadalaxara; and I was informed, that in a neighbouring state, there exists a barranca, which, from the quantity of these colossal remains which are there found, the Indians have named the Barranca de los Gigantes.
Though I should be very glad to take shelter under the convenient Quien sabe?—the use of which I have suggested to you—I could not avoid, at the time I was in Mexico, putting many isolated facts together, and feeling inclined to believe that this country had not only been inhabited in extremely remote times, when the valley bore a different aspect from that which it now exhibits, or which tradition gives k, but that the extinct race of enormous animals, whose remains would seem, in the instance I have cited, to be coeval with the undated works of man, may have been subjected to his will, and made instrumen-
