The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. Hugh Miller

when great birds frequented by myriads the shores of a nameless lake, to wade into its shallows in quest of mail-covered fishes of the ancient type, or long-extinct molluscs; while reptiles equally gigantic, and of still stranger proportions, haunted the neighboring swamps and savannahs; and when the same sun that shone on the tall moving forms beside the waters, and threw their long shadows across the red sands, lighted up the glades of deep forests, all of whose fantastic productions—tree, bush, and herb—have even in their very species long since passed away. And of this scene of things only the footprints remain—"footprints on the sands of time," that tell us, among other matters, whence the graceful American poet derived his quiet but singularly effective and unmistakeably indigenous figure:—

      "Lives of great men all remind us

       We can make our lives sublime,

       And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time. Footprints that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again."