104 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



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 

 collection of Count Maurepas, but without success. I 

 find older, but equally doubtful, statements as to the 

 existence of alphabetical inscriptions belonging to the primi- 

 tive nations of America, in Pedro de Ciega de Leon, 

 Chronica del Peru, P. i. cap. 87 (losa con letras en los 

 edificios de Vinaque); in Garcia, 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 imple- 

 ment, 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 effect of water 

 on the surface of the earth. 



( 13 ) p. 7. "Like an arm of the Sea." 

 The great Steppe, which extends from east to west from 



