Explore "The Technique of the Mystery Story" by Carolyn Wells on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Without a doubt the most woefully overdone and mix-done evidence is that of footprints.
Perhaps with the exception of that one found by Robinson Crusoe, no footprints in fiction,--not even those left on the sands of time for that hypothetical forlorn and shipwrecked brother,--have been either plausible or, in their evidence, credible.