150 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



two "8's." Also a large tablet, twelve inches by eight to ten inches 

 "with Roman numerals and Arabic." It is said that the figure "8" 

 occurs three times, and the figure, or letter "O" seven times. "With 

 these familiar characters are others that resemble ancient alpha- 

 bets, either Phoenecian or Hebrew." 



It may be that the discovery of Australia, for instance, will turn 

 out to be less important than the discovery and the meaning of 

 these tablets 



But where will you read of them in anything subsequently pub- 

 lished; what antiquarian has ever since tried to understand them, 

 and their presence, and indications of antiquity, in a land that 

 we're told was inhabited only by unlettered savages? 



These things that are exhumed only to be buried in some other 

 way. 



Another tablet was found, at Davenport, by Mr. Charles Har- 

 rison, president of the American Antiquarian Society. "... 8 and 

 other hieroglyphics are upon this tablet." This time, also, fraud 

 is not mentioned. My own notion is that it is very unsportsman- 

 like ever to mention fraud. Accept anything. Then explain it your 

 way. Anything that assimilates with one explanation, must have 

 assimilable relations, to some degree, with all other explanations, 

 if all explanations are somewhere continuous. Mormons are lugged 

 in again, but the attempt is faint and helpless "because general 

 circumstances make it difficult to explain the presence of these 

 tablets." 



Altogether our phantom resistance is mere attribution to the 

 Mormons, without the slightest attempt to find base for the attribu- 

 tion. We think of messages that were showered upon this earth, and 

 of messages that were cached in mounds upon this earth. The simi- 

 larity to the Franklin situation is striking. Conceivably centuries 

 from now, objects dropped from relief-expedition-balloons may be 

 found in the Arctic, and conceivably there are still undiscovered 

 caches left by Franklin, in the hope that relief expeditions would 

 find them. It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to 

 the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the 

 aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that 

 the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers 

 from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention 

 from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has 



been discovered upon the moon Just now we think of lettered 



things and their two possible significances. 



