which the bricks of Babylon are found. It merely signifies that its
moral existence is not co-equal with its physical, or geological formation.«
    »Anan!« said the old man looking up inquiringly into the face of the
Philosopher.
    »Merely, that it has not been so long known in morals, as the other
countries of Christendom.«
    »So much the better, so much the better. I am no great admirator of your old
morals, as you call them, for I have ever found, and I have liv'd long, as it
were, in the very heart of natur', that your old morals are never of the best.
Mankind twist and turn the rules of the Lord, to suit their own wickedness when
their devilish cunning has had too much time to trifle with his commands.«
    »Nay, venerable hunter, still am I not comprehended. By morals, I do not
mean the limited and literal signification of the term, such as is convey'd in
its synonyme, morality, but the practices of men, as connected with their daily
intercourse, their institutions, and their laws.«
    »And such I call, barefaced and downright wantonness and waste,« interrupted
his sturdy disputant.
    »Well be it so,« returned the Doctor, abandoning the explanation in despair.
»Perhaps I have conceded too much,« he, then, instantly added, fancying that he
still saw the glimmerings of an argument through another chink in the discourse,
»Perhaps I have conceded too much, in saying that this hemisphere is literally
as old in its formation, as that which embraces the venerable quarters of
Europe, Asia and Africa.«
    »It is easy to say that a pine is not so tall as an alder, but it would be
hard to prove. Can you give a reason for such a belief?«
    »The reasons are numerous and powerful,« returned the Doctor delighted by
this encouraging opening. »Look into the plains of Egypt and Araby, their sandy
deserts teem with the monuments of their antiquity; and then we have also
recorded documents of their glory, doubling the proofs of their former
greatness, now that they lie stripped of their fertility, while we look in vain
for similar evidences that man has ever reach'd the summit of civilization on
this Continent, or search without our reward for the path, by which he has made
the downward journey to his present condition of second childhood.«
    »And what see you in all this?« demanded the trapper, who, though a little
confused