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This great archeological wonder is located in the Onondaga Valley, on the west side, about three-quarters of a mile from the village of Cardiff. The valley itself is one of erosion, dating its birth to the time when the gradual rise of our continent from beneath the ocean’s waves had subjected all this portion of our State to the fierce furrowing and deep denuding action of violent currents of water, aided in their work by floating masses of ice and by rock debris carried by and often frozen into these masses. For about twelve miles south from Syracuse the valley is quite narrow, but here the hills recede on either side and sweep widely around in two high crescent-like ranges to meet again (or nearly so) at a point three or four miles higher up the stream. Within the sort of amphitheater thus formed, and at the foot of the western hill, is the farm of Mr. Newell. His house and outbuildings lie at the edge of the slope, and touching a low meadow which extends for a hundred yards or more to the bushy margin of a creek beyond. A smaller stream or a branch of this same appears at one time to have run close to the hill, leaving faint traces of its contour on the meadow, and one small elliptical swale or soft, boggy spot, a few yards across, near the lower corner of Mr. Newell’s barn. It was while digging a shallow pit in this swale that the relic was found. It is a gigantic human figure lying on its back, with its head to the east and feet to the west. The head is in the position commonly given to a corpse; the right arm extends downwards, with the hand and fingers spread stiffly across the abdomen; the left arm bends down along the left side, with the hand quite under the middle line of the body; the left hip is raised a trifle, the thigh and leg more so, so as to bring the lower part of the left leg and foot obliquely across and over the same parts on the right. The posture is in all one that a dying body left to itself might naturally assume. The entire length of the figure is ten feet two and a half inches, and the other parts of the body are proportionately colossal.

Its head is of a very elongated type, but well shaped, and with a countenance full of solemn, dignified composure. The features are purely Caucasian, having neither the high cheek bones of the Indian, nor any other facial outlines which mark the type of other Aztec aborigines.

To describe the appearance of this great figure as being strange and impressive is saying too little.

Lying as it still does, in its original earthy bed, its grey massive form hardly yet still from the struggles by which it seems to have freed itself, and the face, body and limbs still damp with the ooze of its low sepulchre, it possesses the beholder with a feeling of extremest awe and profoundest wonder. To interrupt these emotions by speculations as to its personality, to approach this majestic figure with the calm processes of scrutinizing investigation, seems a sacrilege. All one’s feelings persuade to accept it as a real human being, once instinct with life and activity, now a noble corpse. The proprietors of the giant figure, or statue, as we shall now call it, use all due effort to strengthen this feeling, and enlarge the belief that their wonderful discovery is really a petrified human being–a genuine” Fossil Man” preserved entire, with flesh and bones changed to stone in the very place where he fell at death, or possibly was buried by his coevals of an olden time. All opportunities of close examination are refused; indeed, the present throng of visitors would make such general permission impracticable. The little, darkened tent, and the pit shaded by a triple row of spectators, whose heads almost touch across it in their earnest efforts to see the body below, made it quite impossible for me to obtain that thorough acquaintance with the huge object which I would have liked. But I saw enough in the fifteen minutes (only) which are allowed to each set of visitors within the tent to fully satisfy myself of the true nature of the figure.