92 
giant,” “Prof. Scott’s discoveries in Utah,” etc. ad nauseum. 
Iam almost ashamed to refer to these preposterous stories, 
which fall within the same category with the accounts of the 
golden plates of Mormon, the “ Holy Stones” of Newark, 
the Grave Creek inscribed stone, and Pontelli’s Discoveries in 
Guatemala. But when we look back to what the exact 
sciences have had to pass through, in the way of absurdity 
and extravagance, before they took a positive shape, we can- 
not wonder that the infancy of American Archeology should 
be thus beset. The task of fool-killeris not, however, a 
pleasant one, nor yet that of clearing away the dead wood of 
falsehood and ignorance. It is far easier to inculcate a truth 
than to eradicate an error. 
Apart from sheer inventions, like those to which I have 
alluded, there is another class of impostures, made such by 
extravagance of description, and absence of critical or accu- 
rate appreciation on the part of observers. JI mean in 
matters in which there is a basis of truth—a granule around 
which careless explorers and loose writers contrive to crys- 
talize a mass of startling and utterly erroneous statement, 
without apparently being fully conscious of what they are 
doing. Striving after effect—the prevailing vice of Ameri 
can writers of a certain class—often carries men past the 
line of simple extravagance, into the region of real, if not 
intentional falsehood. 
IT am led to make these remarks, from having just seen in 
the newspapers, what purports to be a of reswmé a report of 
“Goy. Arny, Special Indian Commissioner in New Mexico,” 
in which he describes certain ancient remains in the Cafion of 
Chelly. There is no reason to suspect the accuracy of the 
report generally, for the existence of extensive ruins in the 
region between the Gila and Colorado, has been known for 
hundreds of years. Nor am I surprised at the popular, 
uncritical and utterly unsupported hypothesis that ascribes 
these remains to the “ Aztecs.” But when I read that among 
the ruins are found “ handsome arches and other architectural 
devices and ornaments,” I suspect something more than 
extravagance of statement. 
