106 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATL'RAL SCIENCES. 



ments were ver>' recently being made to remove it to Copenhagen. The 

 excitement caused by this movement culminated lately in a public meet- 

 hig at Boston, and other airangements were there made by which this 

 important monument of our early history is to be preserved and trans- 

 ported to that city. In consideration of this concession on the part of 

 the Danish antiquaries, a granite monument is to be erected on the spot 

 now occupied by the engraved rock, thus to commemorate the landing 

 here in 1007 of Thorfinn, as narrated in the Saga, and in the inscription, 

 as read by Magnusen. 



For most of the following information in regard to the other inscribed 

 stones, I am indebted to Col. Whittlesey's Tract No. 33, entitled 

 •' Archaeological Frauds,'" being the second one by him with that title. 



Grave Creek S^one.— This inscribed stone has excited nearly as much 

 comment and controversy as the tirst. It was discovered in 1838, and 

 was seen by Schoolcraft in 1843, in whose work it is tigured from a draw- 

 ing made by Capt. Eastman, U. S. A. 



Schoolcraft considers it genuine ; Squier doubts its authenticity ; while 

 Col. Whittlasey says : " The best authorities in the United States have 

 condemned it during many years. The preponderance of proof, as well 

 as of probabilities, is decidedly against it." And yet, at the Congress of 

 Americanists, at Nancy, in 1875, it (or rather, according to Whittlesey, 

 an imperfect copy) was read by Mr. Bing, as follows : " Thy orders are 

 laws, thou shinest in thy impetuous clan, and rapid as the chamois." Mr. 

 Bing then adds : '• I not only sustain but justify the autlienticity of the 

 twenty-three Canaanite or Phoenician letters, comprising the eight words 

 of the Grave Creek inscription." 



In 1857, M. Maurice Schwab had read the same inscription as follows, 

 viz : " The chief of emigration who reached these places (or this island), 

 has fixed these decrees forever." 



Again M. Oppert, another advocate of the Phoenecian theory, had read 

 it: '• The grave of one who was murdered here; to i-evenge him may 

 God strike his murderer, suddenly taking away his existence '' {en lui 

 trancliant la main, Vexistence). 



These three different renderings of the same sentence by these learned 

 men are doubtless interesting, but it must be admitted that they are also 

 somewhat embarrassing. fig. ii. 



The three following characters are common to the yv 

 inscription on Dighton Rock, and to that on the /j> Y / 

 Grave Creek stone : ^ 



Of the twenty-three characters on the Grave Creek stone, the seven 

 following, viz : 



< I >^ xxs 



are, according to Schoolcraft, to be found among the so-called " Stick 

 book" characters of the Ancieiat Bardic (the Billet of the Bards of 



