of
genius.

The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had
occurred to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had
in it so much of the portentous character, that I might well have been
excused for regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time
so confounded and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could
make up my mind to communicate the circumstances to my friend.

Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at
an open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a
view of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been
denuded by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its
trees. My thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to
the gloom and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes
from the page, they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an
object--upon some living monster of hideous conformation, which very
rapidly made its way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally
in the dense forest below. As this creature first came in sight, I
doubted my own sanity--or at least the evidence of my own eyes; and
many minutes passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was
neither mad nor in a dream. Yet when I described the monster (which
I distinctly saw, and calmly surveyed through the whole period of
its progress), my readers, I fear, will feel more difficulty in being
convinced of these points than even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of
the large trees near which it passed--the few giants of the forest which
had escaped the fury of the land-slide--I concluded it to be far larger
than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line, because
the shape of the monster suggested the idea--the hull of one of our
seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the general
outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of a
proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as
the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was
an immense quantity of black shaggy hair--more than could have been
supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this
hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike
those of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending
forward, parallel with the