HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 307 



of a Western Indian mound. " "We hare at hand," says|Mr.?'Haven, 

 *' Jewish phylacteries that were taken from beneath the soil, in a 

 country village, where it was declared Jews were never known to have 

 Keen ; but a follower of Moses was ultimately traced to the very spot 

 where these were found."* The Eagle newspaper of Jackson, Missouri, 

 describes " averitable Egyptian coin," found there in December, 1858, 

 about thirty feet below the surface, in digging a well; and comments 

 on the evidence thus furnished from time to time, " that the country 

 was known centuries before the time of Columbus, not only to the 

 Northmen and other Europeans, but to the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, 

 and even to the Chinese." Similar notices of the recovery of ancient 

 coins have been repeatedly published ; and, considering the zeal devo- 

 ted to numismatic collections in America, it is far from improbable 

 that an occasional stray waif from these cabinets may have furnished 

 genuine materials for such a discovery. But it is to be feared that the 

 majority of them are no better authenticated than the reputed find of 

 the apochryphal Professor Scrobein, among the foundations of the 

 Newport Bound Tower. 



Of another class of Antiquities is "the Alabama Stone," an inno- 

 cent piece of blundering, not without its significance. It was dis- 

 covered near the Black Warrior River, about forty years ago, when no 

 rumours of the old Northmen's visits to "Vinland stimulated the dis- 

 honest zeal of relic hunters, or tempted the credulity of over-zealous 

 antiquaries; and so its mysterious Roman capitals and remote ante- 

 Columbian date were only wondered at as an inexplicable riddle. As 

 originally transcribed this record of the thirteenth century ran thus: 



HISRNEHNDREV. 



1232 



Had this Alabama stone turned up opportunely in 1830, when the 

 Antiquaries of New England were in possession of a roving com.rais- 

 sion on behoof of Finn Magnussen and other Danish heirs and assig- 

 nees of old Ari Marson, who knows what might have been made of 

 ISO tempting a morceau? From the Annales Flateyenses, we learn of 

 **Eric Groenlandinga biskup " who, in A.D., 1121, went to seek out 

 Vinland ; and in the following century the Annates Holenses, recovered 

 by Torfeeus from the episcopal seat of Holum in Iceland, supply this 

 tempting glimpse : " faunst nyja land,'''' i.e., new land is found. With 



* jirchceology of the United States, p. 135. 



