depressions.  In many parts of Dacotah, where the route is difficult to find, rocks occur with human footprints carved upon them which were probably meant to serve as geographical landmarks—­as they invariably indicate the best route to some Indian encampment or to the shallow parts of some deep river.  Among other places these footprints have been met with on the Blue Mountains between Georgia and North Carolina, and also on the Kenawha River.  Some stir was made two years ago by the reported discovery of the prints of human feet in a stone quarry on the coast of Lake Managua in Nicaragua.  The footprints are remarkably sharp and distinct; one seems that of a little child.  The stone in which they are impressed is a spongy volcanic tuff, and the layer superimposed upon them in the quarry was of similar material.  These prehistoric footprints were doubtless accidentally impressed upon the volcanic stone, and would seem to throw back the age of man on the earth to a most remote antiquity.  In Equatorial Africa footprints have also been found, and are associated with the folklore of the country.  Stanley, in his Dark Continent, tells us that in the legendary history of Uganda, Kimera, the third in descent from Ham, was so large and heavy that he made marks in the rocks wherever he trod.  The impression of one of his feet is shown at Uganda on a rock near the capital, Ulagolla.  It was made by one of his feet slipping while he was in the act of hurling his spear at an elephant.  In the South Sea Islands department of the British Museum is an impression of a gigantic footstep five feet in length.

The connection of prehistoric footprints with sacred sites and places of sepulture would indicate that they had a religious significance—­an idea still further strengthened by the fact of their being frequently associated with holy wells and groves, and with cup-shaped marks on cromlechs or sacrificial altars, which are supposed to have been used for the purpose of receiving libations; while their universal distribution points to a hoary antiquity, when a primitive natural cultus spread over the whole earth, traces of which are found in every land, behind the more elaborate and systematic faith which afterwards took its place.  They are probably among the oldest stone-carvings that have been left to us, and were executed by rude races with rude implements either in the later stone or early bronze age.  Their subsequent dedication to holy persons in Christian times was in all likelihood only a survival of their original sacred use long ages after the memory of the particular rites and ceremonies connected with them passed away.  A considerable proportion of the sacred marks are said to be impressions of the female foot, attributed to the Virgin Mary; and in this circumstance we may perhaps trace a connection with the worship of the receptive element in nature, which was also a distinctive feature of primitive religion.