136 AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. 



to be looked for. Was not Dighton Eock, in Massachusetts — wbicli! 

 tbe Kev. Dr. Ezra Stiles, had shown in 1783, to be graven in the old 

 Punic or Phoenician character and languages — proved by the Danish 

 Antiquaries of 1837 to be in the Runic character and Norse language ? 

 The fancy was welcome to thousands. Learning and critical judgment 

 were for the most part scant enough, but faith and zeal abounded ; 

 and if a sceptical doubter appeared on American soil, the high court of 

 final appeal at Copenhagen pronounced against him without fail. So 

 the ftimous " Grave Creek Mound Inscription" turned up opportunely 

 on the banks of the Ohio, and gave occasion to a world of fine writing, 

 and learned disquisition. An axe inscribed in linear characters was 

 found at Pemberton, New Jersey, and submitted to the American 

 Ethnological Society; and rumours of similar inscriptions, from time 

 to time, furnished sensational paragraphs for the press. 



But after a while the Dighton Rock itself fell into disrepute. The 

 believers in its Runic legend got laughed at for their credulity ; and the 

 antiquaries of the West fell back on their old search for the lost Ten 

 Tribes. Mr. David Wyrick of Newark took the lead in this revived 

 quest, and ere long Harper's " Weekly Journal of Civilization " 

 delighted its readers with a facsimile of "The Ohio Holy Stone," a 

 masonic key-stone as it proved to be, graven in Hebrew characters^ 

 and older than the days of Solomon. But this was a bagatelle to 

 what followed. The results of the indefatigable zeal of the Newark 

 antiquaries showed what invaluable treasures await the researches of 

 the American archaeologist, when once rightly directed. The most 

 marvellous disclosures were rumored from time to time. But wonders 

 could go no further, when at length, in 1860, there turned up in an 

 Ohio mound a new version of the Ten Commandments, graven on a 

 tablet of stone, in antique Hebrew; and it became obvious, ere long, 

 that the actual grave mound had at length been discovered in which 

 Moses, the servant of the Lord, was buried, of Avhich, for two thousand 

 three hundred years, it had been truly said " No man knoweth of his 

 sepulchre unto this day." 



It was obviously difl&cult to achieve much more in this direction. The 

 great American war, moreover, came ere long to occupy men's minds 

 with more earnest thoughts ; and so the mounds of the west were left 

 once more " to dumb forgetfulness a prey." But the spirit of faith, 

 and the uncritical credulity of an active but uncultured inquisitiveness, 

 were by no means quenched. The lost Ten Tribes and their Hebrew 



