310 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



a memorial of Juan Peace de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, and to 

 " tally exactly with the sixth year after his landing ;" which, how- 

 ever, it does not, as that took place on Pasqua Florid, or Palm Sun- 

 day, A. D., 1512. The attempt, indeed, to identify the name thus 

 rudely graven on a stray boulder, either with that of the sovereign 

 pontiff, Leo X. or with Don Juan Ponce de Leon, is only less extrava- 

 gant than the persistent decyphering of that of the Icelandic Thorfinn 

 on the Dighton rock. 



Apart, however, from any such special identification of the object 

 of the memorial on the Manlius Stone, it is a relic of considerable 

 interest. No reasonable grounds exist for questioning its genuineness ; 

 and we are thus supplied with an inscription of a date within eighteen 

 years of the first landing of Columbus on the mainland ; and only six 

 years susequent to Sir Walter Raleigh's first expedition to the country 

 which, on the return of his exploring party, received the name of 

 Virginia. A discovery of this nature, associated with the earliest 

 known period of European exploration of the American continent, in 

 a locality so far to the northward, and so remote from the sea coast, 

 when taken into consideration along with the authentic traces of older 

 Scandinavian settlement still discoverable in Greenland, is calculated 

 to confirm the doubts of any Scandinavian colonisation of Vinland in 

 ante-Columbian centuries. That the old Northmen visited some 

 portions of the American coasts appears to be confirmed by cre- 

 dible testimony; but that their presence was transient, and that 

 they left no enduring evidence of their visits, seem no less certain. 

 To the Spanish pioneers of American discovery and civilisation in the 

 centuries subsequent to the era of Columbus, we must therefore look 

 for the earliest memorials of European adventure in the New World. 



The lettered traces of the early Spanish explorers of America are 

 definite, and generally easily deciphered inscriptions, like those of the 

 older colonists of Greenland ; and possess an inferior historical value, 

 chiefly because of the ample materials provided by Spanish chroniclers 

 for the history of the discovery and conquest of Spanish America. In 

 1850 a series of reports made to the Topographical Bureau of the 

 United States, was issued from the War Department at Washington ; 

 and among these is the journal of a military reconnoissance from 

 Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country, in 1849, by Lieuten- 

 ant James K. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. His 

 narrative is accompanied with illustrations of a remarkable series of 



