168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lying southward of the Isthmus of Darien. This war ended in the an- 

 nihilation of the Nephites, " an exceeding fair and delightsome peo- 

 ple," while a degraded remnant of the Lamanites still survive, after 

 fifteen centuries of rapine and discord, under the name of American 

 Indians. " Now the heads of the Lamanites were shorn ; and the}' 

 were naked, save it were skin, which was girded about their loins ; 

 and the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark 

 which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them be- 

 cause of their transgression." Thus the term Gentile is properly used 

 to denote the white man, as distinguished from the copper-colored 

 house of Israel, and the Mormons themselves are expressly described 

 as the " Gentile Saints." For the remnant of Joseph a glorious future 

 is prophesied. They, the despised redskins, shall have the land for 

 their inheritance, and it shall be " a land of liberty unto the Gentiles, 

 and there shall be no kings upon the land." They are to be the chief 

 agents in building the New Jerusalem, and will be converted and re- 

 deemed before their brethren of Judah. " 



The story of the plates, from which the sacred book is said to 

 have been translated, first into English, and subsequently into nearly 

 all the European languages, is of some interest from an archaeologi- 

 cal point of view, and may be told in a few words. They are de- 

 scribed as having been found by Joseph Smith in a cyst composed of 

 six stones, smooth on the inner surfaces, and firmly cemented together. 

 This stone box was buried in the side of a hill near Palmyra, in the 

 State of New York. The plates had the appearance of gold, were six 

 by eight inches in width and length, each plate being nearly as thick 

 as common tin. They were filled on both sides with small char- 

 acters beautifully engraved, and were fastened at one edge with 

 three rings running through the whole : thus bound together they 

 formed a volume about six inches in thickness, a part of which was 

 sealed. Various unsuccessful attempts were made by the enemies of 

 Joseph Smith to obtain possession of these plates, and they finally 

 disappeared, having been examined and described by eleven persons, 

 whose testimony, signed with their names, is added to the Book of 

 Mormon. 



The evidence of these persons would have been more conclusive 

 had not all of them been believers in the new prophet ; moreover, the 

 disappearance of the plates is not quite satisfactorily explained by 

 the statement that they were restored to the charge of the angel 

 under whose guidance they were discovered. Still the actual exist- 

 ence, as well as the genuine antiquity, of plates such as Joseph Smith 

 is said to have brought to light in 1827, seems to have been sufficiently 

 verified elsewhere. 



In 1843, near Kinderhook, Illinois, in excavating a large mound, 

 six brass plates were discovered, of a bell-shape, four inches in length, 

 and covered with ancient characters. They were fastened together 



