

96 STEPPES AND DESEKTS. 



Can it really have contained alphabetical writing ? or is it not far 

 more probably a pictorial history, like the supposed Phoenician 

 inscription on the bank of the Taunton River ? I consider it, how- 

 ever, very probable that these plains were once traversed by civilized 

 nations : pyramidal sepulchral mounds, and entrenchments of extra- 

 ordinary length, found in various places between the Rocky Mount- 

 ains and the Alleghanies, and on which Squier and Davis (in the 

 " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley") are now throwing 

 a new light, appear to confirm this supposition. (Relation Hist., 

 t. iii. p. 155.) Verandrier had been sent on his expedition by the 

 Chevalier de Beauharnois, the French Governor-general of Canada, 

 in 1746. Several Jesuits in the city of Quebec assured Kalm that 

 they had themselves had the supposed inscription in their hands : it 

 was engraved upon a small tablet which had been let into a pillar 

 of cut stone, in which position it was found. I have asked several 

 of my friends in France to search out this monument, in case it 

 should really be in existence in the cpllection of Count Maurepas, 

 but without success. I find older, but equally doubtful, statements 

 as to the existence of alphabetical inscriptions belonging to the 

 primitive nations of America, in Pedro de Ciea de Leon, Chronica 

 del Peru, p. i. cap. 87 (losa con letras en los edificios.de Vinaque) ; 

 in G-arcia, Origen de los Indios, 1607, lib. iii. cap. 5, p. 258 ; and in 

 Columbus' s Journal of his first voyage, in Navarrete, Viages de 

 los Espanoles, t. i. p. 67. M. de Verandrier moreover affirmed 

 (and earlier travellers had also thought^they had observed the same 

 thing), that in the prairies of Western Canada, throughout entire 

 days' journeys, traces of the ploughshare were discoverable ; but the 

 total ignorance of the primitive ^nations of America with regard to 

 this agricultural implement, the want of draft cattle, and the great 

 extent of ground over which the supposed furrows are found all 

 lead me to conjecture that this singular appearance of a ploughed 

 field has been produced by some efiect of water on the surface of 

 the earth. 



( 13 ) p. 29." Like, an arm of the Sea." 



The great Steppe, which extends from east to west from the 

 mouth of the Orinoco to the snowy mountains of Merida, turns to 



