Of course, Drake, no one has ever been to the moon to make a personal inspection. Yet the wise men of the east think they have good reasons for believing that the moon, and this earth, and all the planets and stars we see in the heavens, were once a burning mass of fire, that the moon has cooled off, and is now a cold, uninhabited world.
You do not mean to say that this earth on which we live was, at one time a seething mass of fire?
I do not mean to assert that, I simply say, that by investigation, I am led to believe that such was the case.
Cahoonshee, where do you say that man came from? and what was the reason for the great difference between the white man and the Indian?
Ah, Drake, you have opened a subject that is but little understood, and one that I am not capable of satisfactorily answering. Yet, I will give you my views.
Betsy’s bible gives an account of the creation of man. That God made him from the dust of the earth, and in His own image. But you should understand that this is the white man’s bible, and in it the Indians are called heathens. But the Indian’s bible is much older, and plainer to be read.
It is Nature’s book.
The rocks, rivers and mountains are its chapters. Beasts, birds and reptiles are its verses, and the Great Spirit is its author. And within this book will be found all that does or ever did exist. The constituent parts are the mineral, animal and vegetable kingdoms of the world. Each has within itself a principle of organic life, but of itself cannot produce either animal or vegetable life, but a combination of these elements, by a chemical process, known only to nature, produces something unlike either the constituent parts. Thus the principle the germ of all animal and vegetable life is contained in the natural world, and it only requires that these different properties should be combined in order to work out the natural result.
It is done by the same power and upon the same principles that draws the apple to the ground, and balances the planet in its orbit.