All one's feelings persuade to accept it as a
real human being, once instinct with life and activity, now a noble
corpse. The proprietors of the giant figure, or statue, as we
shall now call it, use all due effort to strengthen this feeling,
and enlarge the belief that their wonderful discovery is really a
petrified human being--a genuine" Fossil Man" preserved entire,
with flesh and bones changed to stone in the very place where he
fell at death, or possibly was buried by his coevals of an olden
time. All opportunities of close examination are refused; indeed,
the present throng of visitors would make such general permission
impracticable. The little, darkened tent, and the pit shaded by
a triple row of spectators, whose heads almost touch across it in
their earnest efforts to see the body below, made it quite impossible
for me to obtain that thorough acquaintance with the huge object
which I would have liked. But I saw enough in the fifteen minutes
(only) which are allowed to each set of visitors within the tent
to fully satisfy myself of the true nature of the figure.
The "Onondaga Giant" is the work of the sculptor, and out of a
single large block of the gypseous limestone (an upper member of
the "Onondaga Salt Group") which forms large beds in the immediate
vicinity. This stone is very strongly marked by lines of deposition,
causing bands of different shades extending in horizontal layers,
perfectly even and parallel through large quarry masses.
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