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The so-called foot-mark on Adam's Peak in Ceylon has been attributed by Brahmans to Siva, by Buddhists to Sakyamuni, by Gnostics to Ieu, by Muhammadans to Adam, and by the Portuguese Christians to either St. Thomas or the eunuch of Candace, queen of Ethiopia. J.E. Tennent's Ceylon , ii. 133, quoted in Yule's Marco Polo, ed. H. Cordier, 1903, ii. 321.
The majesty and sublimity of the stupendous works of the great Author and Creator of the Universe, when contrasted with the insignificance of the powers and achievements of a vivified atom of earth modeled into human form, are probably under no circumstances more strikingly exhibited and felt than when one becomes bewildered and lost in the almost limitless amplitude of our great North American "pampas," where not a single foot-mark or other trace of man's presence or action can be discovered, and where the solitary wanderer is startled at the sound even of his own voice.
This is evidently an original fossil foot-mark: no work of Indians. I'll go with you," gathering his dressing-gown about his lank-legs. "No," said the Captain, some sudden thought bringing gravity and self-reliance into his face. "My little girl is going with Uncle Dan. It's the last walk I can take with her. Go, child, and bring your bonnet."
No squirrel track, no slim, sharp foot-mark of partridge, traversed the immaculate level. One winter, after a light snowfall in the night, as Reuben strayed into the low-ceilinged kitchen of the Hansen farm-house, Mr. Hansen remarked in his quaint, dreamy drawl, "What for have you been walking on the Perdu, Reuben? This morning, on the new snow, I saw foot-marks of a human running right across it.
"Yet after all," he said aloud, as if to convince himself, "it's only a bit of stone! What can it prove?" His subconsciousness seemed to make answer: "So, too, the sign that Robinson Crusoe found on the beach was only a human foot-mark. Do not deceive yourself!" In deep thought the engineer stood there a moment or two. Then, "Bah!" cried he. "What does it matter, anyhow?
The air was full of the pungent scent. "Pah!" said Mr. Downing. Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clue. A foot-mark! No less. A crimson foot-mark on the grey concrete! Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughed plaintively. The sound recalled Mr. Downing to mundane matters. "Get your bicycle, Riglett," he said, "and be careful where you tread.
We had marched for about an hour and a quarter and in this time had only made two miles, when we suddenly arrived upon the edge of a dried-up bed of a sedgy swamp, which lay in the centre of a small plain, where we saw the foot-mark of a native imprinted on the sand, and again our hearts beat with hope, for this sign appeared to announce that we were once more entering the regions of animal life.
There is no stain, no dust, no foot-mark on it; no heavy shoe that has been tramping about in the mud has been up there. But it is necessary to go on or go back, and of the two the first is the lesser evil. The staircase is guarded by carved banisters, and after going up two flights you enter a large and vacant apartment prepared for the meeting of the farmers' club.
But, with the snow down on the Plateau, every Austrian track and foot-mark would have been visible from our O.P.'s, and the Austrian situation, bad as it already was from this point of view, would have become quite intolerable.
'There it has stood and shone a thousand years, said he; 'and but for such marks, who could cross these seas of sand, where your foot-mark is lost, as soon as made? After a few moments' pause, he again exclaimed: 'And by the beard of holy Abraham! a living human being sits at the root or else mayhap my eyes deceive me, and I see only the twisted roots of the tree.
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