a relic which, if genuine, is an object of such just interest, should have been given to the world under such equivocal circumstances, and elucidated with so much indiscreet zeal.

The Virginian inscription is not, however, the sole example of graven characters found on the American continent in connexion with native antiquities. In 1859, Dr. John C. Evans of Pemberton, New Jersey, communicated to the American Ethnological Society an account of a stone axe inscribed in unknown characters, which had been recently ploughed up on a neighbouring farm. The axe, which measures about six inches long by three and a half broad, is engraved here (Fig. 50) from a

drawing furnished to me by Dr. Evans. When exhibited to the Ethnological Society, Mr. Thomas Ewbank remarked, that "it seemed strange that the characters, if intended to signify anything, should be placed where they would be most exposed to being worn away by the use of the instrument." Two of the characters are placed on one side, in the groove for the handle, the others apparently form a continuous line, running round both

sides of the axe-blade, as extended here (Fig. 51). This is not, however, an altogether unique example of an engraved axe. The practice of decorating implements of

the simplest forms with graven and hieroglyphic characters has already been illustrated in a previous chapter, in one of the Carib shell knives (Fig. 6) from Barbadoes.1 Such devices probably indicate the dedication of the weapon or implement to some special and sacred purpose, such as the rites of Mexican sacrifice rendered so

common.

Humboldt figures, in his Vues des Cordillères, a hatchet made of a compact feldspar passing into true jade, obtained by him from the Professor of Mineralogy in the School of Mines at Mexico, with its surface covered with graven figures or characters. In commenting on this interesting relic, M. Humboldt adds: "Notwithstanding our long and frequent journeys in the Cordilleras of the two Americas, we were never able to discover the jade in situ; and this rock being so rare, we are the more astonished at the great quantity of hatchets of jade which are found on turning up the soil in localities formerly inhabited, extending from the Ohio to the mountains of Chili." 2 Here also, therefore, we have a glimpse of wide-spread ancient trade and barter carried on throughout the American continent in ancient

1 See vol. i. p. 209. 2 Vues des Cordillères, vol. ii. p. 146, plate xxviii.

times, and of a wider intercourse, embracing both North and South America, than the investigators of the traces of former civilisation have been willing to recognise. The accompanying woodcut (Fig. 52) represents the graven "Aztec Hatchet," as Humboldt designates it. It has a certain interest in illustrating a practice of which the Pemberton axe furnishes a new example. Dr. E. H. Davis, who has carefully examined the latter, informs me that though the graven characters have been retouched in the process of cleaning it, and apparently attempted to be deepened by the original discoverer, yet that their edges present an appearance of age perfectly consistent with the idea of their genuineness. Mr. S. R. Gaskell, by whom this axe was found on his own farm, is described as a highly respectable and trustworthy man ; and no attempt to turn the relic to account, either for notoriety or pecuniary gain, furnishes any tangible reason for questioning its authenticity. It may be worth while adding, that this discovery of an inscribed stone axe is not without a parallel among the antiquities of the old country. A writer in the Londonderry Sentinel of November 19, 1858, after noticing the exhumation of various ancient cinerary urns at Cumber and Kincull, County Derry, adds: "Some time ago a curious mallet, or hatchet of gigantic dimensions, composed of solid flint, and apparently covered with ancient characters, was dug up in the same district, but through the ignorance of the parties into whose hands it came, this invaluable relic was unfortunately destroyed. It weighed, we are informed, twelve or thirteen pounds, having been broken up to make a ten-pound weight for common uses! Had this precious stone been preserved, it might have thrown light on a period of our national history which at present is involved in nearly total obscurity. The urns referred to are now in the valuable antiquarian collection of

William L. Browne, Esq., proprietor of the Cumber estate."

The report is too vague to be of much value; but no relics are so fascinating in their promised disclosures of the past, or so justly entitled to value, as those graven with inscriptions, even in unknown characters; if their genuineness be only well attested and free from all suspicion. The Grave Creek Stone and the Pemberton wedge inscriptions, if once authenticated, would altogether contradict the idea that "no trace of an alphabet existed at the time of the conquest of the continent of America."1 The sole literate remains of Pelasgic Italy, found at Ægylla in Southern Etruria, do not greatly exceed in amount these supposed relics of America's forgotten tongues. Dennis gives a list of some thirty-six or thirty-seven words as the extreme limits of our knowledge of the Etruscan language. Even the precise value of its alphabet is undetermined; and the solitary inscription on the Perusinian pillar has supplied the chief materials for such linguistic inductions relative to the ancient Rasena, as the Engubine tablets have done for the Umbrian. The doubt and confusion introduced into such ethnographic inquiries by a single forgery are so mischievous, that the meekest conclave of scholars could scarcely be trusted with the functions of the American Judge Lynch against such an offender. Happily for science, the knowledge of the culprit is generally on a par with his morality.

Of another class of mound-disclosures, which gather their chief marvels under the light of modern eyes, one figured and described by Mr. Schoolcraft, in the American Ethnological Transactions, opens up, with the help of its ingenious interpreter, glimpses of ante-Columbian science, and of comprehensive significance in its graven 1 Types of Mankind, p. 283.