Behemoth: Jean Auel meets John Muir

So this afternoon I read Behemoth: A Legend of the Mound-Builders, the 1839 work of then 22-year-old American novelist Cornelius Mathews. It's a book that saralinda is more familiar with than she probably wants to be. Mathews is a master of the purple prose, which is why I compare him with Muir, especially for the nature scenes.

It's the story of a Mound-Builder society that's being terrorized by the last of the great Mastodons, and their hero chieftain Bokulla, who wants to do something about it. His first great idea was to assemble 100,000 of their men and throw them against the monster; nearly all of them die, but no one blames him. Then he heads off on a solitary quest to try to figure out what should be done, and spends most of it just chasing after a hawk who's caught a partridge. Why the hawk doesn't eat the partridge for three days or more after catching it, I do not know.

Eventually Bokulla gets the idea of trapping the great beast in a small valley. Speaking of which, that's another Muir connection - Mathews has apparently moved the Mound-Builders from Ohio to California, as evidenced by the fact that they live on a grassy plain between the Pacific Ocean and a chain of great, snowy mountains, and Behemoth's home valley bears a striking resemblance to the Yosemite.

( You really need an example of Mathews' writing. Lo, the 'hand of destiny itself'! )