Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/248

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
210
THE EVOLUTION OF WORLDS

while the unearthed animals of the Fayum bear witness to water where no water is to-day.

Anywhere we wander along these girdling belts we find the same story written for us to read. The great

Petrified bridge, third petrified forest, near Admana, Arizona—Photograph by Harvey.

deserts of New Mexico and Arizona show castellated structures far beyond the means of its present Indian population to inhabit. Yet this retrenchment occurred long before the white man came with his exterminating blight on everything he touched. Nor have we reason to suppose that it arose in consequence of invasion by other alien hordes. Individual communities may thus indeed have perished as the preservation of their domiciles intact leads us to infer, but all did not thus vanish from off the Earth. Here again humanity died or moved away because nature dried the sources of its