The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1876-01-20
VOL. ",
WHY THEY DIG.

Scholars are digging all over the world
The destruction of the AlexanGrian an
other libraries has rendered resort to III
spade and pick as necessary in unfoldin
secrets OF history as in promoting railwa
construction. The spade becomes an in
valuable aid TO the study of ancient hi:
tory, and most that is known of primeva
events of this continent is slowly gatherc
by means Of excavations among ruins O
ancient cities built by races long ago exteI
minated. OF ancient America we are tol,
nothing by books and Greek and Roma
writers give infinitely less Information O
the manners and habits and characters o
the people of whose battles and heroes the
tell than modern iBquIsitiveness demands
Old books having been exhausted, scholar
and antiquarians must unearth facts. Rec
ords of events do not extend beyond tn,
beginning OF the Olympiads, eigh
hundred years before Christ. Ever
then nations had grown great, ruled othe
nations and gone down tn oblivion On
the tomb Of one empire another was built,
ana the worlds history, as it affects alike
individuals and nations, had been, as in
later ages, a succession of grand births
and grand deaths, and mankind moved
about the globe, then as now, in one end
less funereal procession. In studying the
obituaries of races, we cannot look back
| through the ages or books beyond the pc
riod when Egypt's third or fourth empire
began to decline. Mesopotamia was nc
longer rich or powerful. Phenicians had
visited Ireland and America, as the CONT
nent then was, and through long preceding
ages, before Greece and Rome were founded,
there were great cities and mighty kings,
! and degree of perfected civilization of
which we are only told by the spade apd
mattock. History, in looking backward
discovers nothing and only tells vague
tradition in which men become gods
and their mighty leaders subjects of idol
atrous veneration.
Of late the substitution of facts, gathered
by archaeological explorers, for the crude
statements of early writers, whose Looks
are marred by interpretations made by those
who transcribed them in successive ages,
has been rapid and wonderful. Moreover,
the assertion made by an ancient monu-
ment, coeval with the event to which it re
fers, cannot be questioned, while written
records as each of us attests who witnessed
the late war between the States, are full of
grossest misrepresentation. Pompeii still,
day by day, tells some fresh story of ancient
Roman life. In Egypt progressive explora-
tions constantly add to our knowledge of
the social condition and public life of a
people who lived three thousand years be-
fore Rome hourshed. DR.. Schlcimann
has unearthed Troy, and while other discov-
cries have shown that history was fable,
DIR. Schleimann has shown that the poetry
of Homer and Troy were facts. Another
Rome has been discovered older and on
the site of that in which Romu-
Irls-aaA- - p...-...A-...a-a raada heroes
by drawing sustenance from wolves as a.
modern heroes from West Point. Gen.
Cesnola has delved into valleys of Cyprus
and rich treasures of ancient art, eighteen
hundred years older than the Christian era,
are exhibited even in New York. In Nine
veh libraries of kings of whom the old
Bible tells and before whom Daniel prophe-
sled, are opened to our inspection by anti
quarian researches, and even an account OF
the deluge has been unearthed. At many
points in Greece, at Athens, Argos, My
Gene and Olympia, excavations are making
which will yet unfold as wonderful facts as
those discovered in the treasury of king
by Schliemann on the site of ancient Troy.
The richest treasures of ancient art were
gathered quadriennially at Olympia, the
Philadelphia and the neutral ground
of ancient Greece, and if these have
escaped, destruction, and were there
concealed as scholars assert, there
may yet be found recorded in marble con-
firmations of much that is doubtful, and
corrections of many greivous errors into
which we have fallen.
Not only are Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece
and Italy full of buried wonders of history,
art and opulence, but in America there are
already discovered evidences of strange
civilizations that preceded every historical
fact and all traditions of which primeval
Inhabitants were cognizant. Plato had
heard of Atlantis, when, like Herodotus,
he sought wisdom at the hands of Egyptian
priests, and Diodorus Siculus told of the
suaken continent west of Africa, of which
Cuba was a part. The same identical story
was told to La Sale, two hundred years
ago, by the Natchez Indians who, like the
Persians of old, were sun-worshlppers,
the fires upon whose lofty altars were
never suffered to become extinct.
Around the globe there are the same identi
cal evidences everywhere lifted UP to en-
dure through the ages, and telling the SAINT
story, OF the same race, of the same peculiar
habits, superstitions and civilization. Th'
very same mounds, having the same topo
| graphical relations TO one another, ans
built for the same purposes, are seen IN th'
valley of the Euphrates and in that of th'
Mississippi, and of the purposes o
these strange memorials of forgotten ma
tions we know almost nothing. Blu
hile progress rushes forward wonde
stares backward, and the two cooperating
the one applying the discoveries of tn
other, we lind that in the dawning of thu
hundtedth year of our national existenc'
we are only beginning to learn how yer,
j. young we are as a people, aud how ves,
old is the continent we inhabit.
THE DEAD or 1878.