THE FLETCHER STONE — WEBSTER. 209 



There has been some confusion as to the exact place where the 

 stone was found ; and I shall therefore describe it particularly. It 

 was on the west side of Yarmouth Harbour ; at the foot of a hill on 

 the east side of a small cove, into which runs a stream from a marsh 

 about a mile long, called the Chegoggin Flats or Salt Pond. An 

 old I'oad, traces of which may yet be seen, used to run around 

 the foot of this hill, and cross the bar at the mouth of the stream. 

 The stone lay a few steps to the east of the road*, on the north- 

 west slope of the hill. I have by me a rough sketch of the 

 harbour, which shows the place clearly. 



Of course many conjectures have been made to account for the 

 extraordinary inscription on the stone. It has been ascribed to 

 everybody w^ho could have been in Nova Scotia, from the Phoe- 

 nicians to Bill Stumps. 



The writer of the article in the Neiu York Herald holds that 

 the Fletcher Stone inscription, as well as many others which have 

 been found along the Atlantic coast, is the w^ork of Carian sailors 

 in the Phrenician navy, who visited America, it is supposed, seven 

 or eight centuries before Christ. But w e possess almost too few 

 data to judge of this hj^pothesis ; the Carian alphabet that we 

 have is only a tentative one, and the cuttings on the Yarmouth 

 stone do not agree with this much better than with the Runic. 



Neither our Indians nor the Esquimaux, who may once have 

 inhabited Nova Scotia, are known to have any inscriptions at all 

 similar to this ; and we may, I think, dismiss them from our dis- 

 cussion. The cuttings are not smooth grooves in the stone, but 

 appear to have been made — to use Dr. Farish's words — "wath a 

 sharp pointed instrument carried on by successive blows of a 

 hammer or mallet, the effect of which is plainly visible." Pro- 

 bably only a metal instrument could have been used in this way 

 and with the effect which we see ; and this precludes the possi- 

 bility of Indian or Esquimaux origin. The fact that the stone 

 shows the same peculiarity now that it did when Dr. Farish wrote, 

 thirty-five years ago, is worth noting ; for it proves that the 

 inscription has not been seriously tampered wdth— that, in spite 



*Mr. Chas E. Brown. 



