AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. ' 147 



So far the report appears to be the work of a correspondent. The 

 editor adds, io propria persona, " We wait for further detail; but we 

 fear the ' discovery' is all a joke." He was favoured, we may presume, 

 with no more than this diluted modicum of the original narrative, con- 

 cocted to suit his weak digestive organs. Even this is pretty strongly 

 seasoned. But had he read the learned Sanscrit scholar, Professor 

 Bacchio's, reports- about the runes and sculptures, all doubts as to its 

 possessing " the highest historical interest" would have vanished. For 

 example, " one of the magnificent groups he is certain is intended to 

 represent Ahasuerus crowning Queen Elizabeth ; and another group of 

 colossal figures, representing captives following the car of a victorious 

 conqueror, are portraits of Luke Deuteronomy and the friend going into 

 captivity."* 



As matters for serious credit, or cantributions " to the history of the 

 migrations of races," such ingenious canards of the American press had 

 better be left to the dwellers around the great mounds of the far west, 

 where a vague wonder is begotten by the earthworks of a forgotten 

 past; and the unsophisticated backwoodsman thinks nothing too won- 

 derful to account for their origin. But this restless craving for some 

 solution of the mystery of a vast continent, revealing everywhere 

 monuments of extinct races, but without a history older than the six- 

 teenth century, — however illogical and uncritical In its manifestations, 

 — is not to be confounded with the credulity af stolid ignorance. The 

 gold plates of the Mormon Gospel were, indeed, exhumed in the same 

 apochiyphal fashion ; but its believers are recruited, to a large extent, 

 from the Old World. After all it is better to have undue faith than 

 intolerant scepticism, as the ally of credulity, whether it be among 

 simple handicraftsmen and tillers of the soil, or with those who assume 

 to dictate new creeds alike in science and religion. 



* As tliis paper is passing through the press, a letter of Mr. E. G. Squier, dated from New York,, 

 appears in the Athencewni of March 20th, in reference to the " monstrously ahsurd stories about 

 archaeological discoveries, chiefly in our Western States." Of the special discovery in question, 

 he says, " substantially tlie same story had been previously published, with the difference that 

 instead of a tunnel, vast vaults, wonderful in monuments ' of Aasyrian type,' had been dis- 

 covered he'ivn in the stony depths of Rock Island. I have before me a long letter from a Vienna 

 Savant, earnestly inquiring iato the particulars of the discovery of ' immense subterranean' in 

 the cliffs of the Pallisades, on the Hudson river, just above this city : and expressing surprise 

 that American Archaeologists have not given a better account of them I could enume- 

 rate numbers of these hoaxes relating to Mexico and Central America, mcluding those of the 

 ' Chevalier PonteUi,' in Guatamala, of which the illustrations astonished the readers of the 

 picture papers of France, England and Germany ; and also those relating to the extraordinary 

 Greek MSS., found at Oaxacingo (Hoax-by- Jingo !) in South Mexico." 



