The Mastodon
The Shawangunk region, even were it wanting in any other recommendation to historic mention, is remarkable as having been the home of the Mastodon. Almost under the shadow of the rock-ribbed ascents, deep in the peat and marl of the adjacent valleys, several skeletons of these huge monsters have been exhumed, some of them the largest and most complete specimens that have come to the sight of man. In a tamarack swamp near Montgomery, in 1845, a gigantic and perfect skeleton was found in a peat bog with marl beneath, where it stood in an erect position, as if the animal lost its life in search of food by getting mired. In the place where its stomach and intestines lay was found a large mass of fragments of twigs and grass, hardly fossilized at all-the remains, doubtless, of the undigested dinner of the monster. This skeleton was eleven feet high and upwards of twenty feet long, and weighed 2000 pounds. It is now in a museum in Boston. Another skeleton, scarcely less remarkable for its size and completeness, was dug up in the year 1872 in the town of Mount Hope. This weighed 1700 pounds, and is now on exhibition in New Haven, County. No less than nine skeletons, more or less entire, have been exhumed within the limits of Orange county.
The era and haunts of this monster mammalia furnish abundant material for consideration, and is of interest both as attracting the superficial notice of the tourist and eliciting the more profound speculations of the geologist. Whether we contemplate the antiquity of his remains entombed for unknown ages in the peat and marl of a swamp-preserved by the antiseptic property of the medium that caused his death; or whether we think of his lordly mastery over the other beasts of his time, of the majesty of his tread over valley and mountain, of his anger when excited to fury, uttering his wrath in thunder tones, there is that in the subject which clothes the locality in a new and interesting light.*
In the north part of a swamp near Crawford's, Orange county, some years since, a mastodon skeleton was found. A writer says of it: “This skeleton I examined very minutely, and found that the carcass had been deposited whole, but that the jaw-bones, two of the ribs, and a thigh-bone had been broken by some violent force while the flesh yet remained on the bones. Two other parts of skeletons were found, one at Ward's bridge, the other at Masten's meadow, in Shawangunk. In both instances the carcasses had been torn asunder, and the bones had been deposited with the flesh on, and some of the bones were fractured. That the bones were deposited with the flesh appears from the fact that they were found attached to each other, and evidently belonged to only one part of the carcass, and no other bones could be found near the spot. Great violence would be necessary to break the bones of such large animals; in the ordinary course of things no force adequate to that effect would be exerted. I think it fair reasoning, that, at the deluge, they were brought by the westerly currents to the place where they were found; that the carcasses were brought in the first violent surges, and bruised and torn asunder by the tremendous cataracts, created when the currents crossed the high mountains and ridges, and fell into the deep valleys between the Shawangunk mountain and the level countries adjacent.”
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*Eager
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