112 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



nick." These Hebrew critics discovered that the con- 

 sonants were attended with vowel marks that had 

 been introduced in the twelfth century, consequently 

 the engraving was comparatively recent, and, of course, 

 a barefaced deception. Although the exhibitor was 

 denounced as an imposter, he unearthed a stone from 

 another mound which bore an epitome of the Ten 

 Commandments in the same modern Hebrew charac- 

 ters. The neighbors of the finder of these astounding 

 relics declared that he was as ignorant of Hebrew as 

 he was of tattoo marks on the Fegee Islanders, there- 

 fore the inscriptions must be out of his power to 

 design. After the death of the finder, a Hebrew 

 Bible was found in his house, and from that he had 

 patiently copied the letters. 



The so-called " Grave Creek Stone," which has 

 several characters or letters engraved upon it, is al- 

 leged to have been taken from the bottom of a mound 

 seventy -five feet high, which is located on Grave 

 Creek, near the Ohio River, twelve miles below 

 Wheeling, in West Virginia. The mound was opened 

 in 1838, by sinking a shaft from its apex to the level 

 of the ground on which the earthwork was raised, 

 and a horizontal canal or " drift " which should 

 meet the vertical well in the center of the base of 

 the tumulus. Just as the central point was reached 

 the perpendicular earth fell into the horizontal shaft 

 or drift. The loosened earth was carried out in wheel- 

 barrows, and while it was being dumped, a stone as 

 big as a Mexican dollar, and about twice as thick, was 

 discovered. This was scrutinized very closely by the 

 several gentlemen present, for one of its surfaces bore 

 three lines of characters or letters that could be dis- 

 tinctly seen. Some of the characters were thought to 



