Page:Beale Papers.djvu/10

Rh Such, in substance, was the statement of Mr. Morriss in answer to the various interrogations propounded to him; and finding that I could elicit no further information, I resolved to do the best I could with the limited means at my disposal. I commenced by reading over and over again the letters to Mr. Morriss, endeavoring to impress each syllable they contained on my memory, and to extract from them, if possible, some meaning or allusion that might give, perhaps, a faint or barely preceptible hint as a guide; no such clue, however, could I find, and where or how to commence was a problem I found most difficult to solve. To systematize a plan for my work I arranged the papers in the order of their length, and numbered them, designing to commence with the first, and devote my whole attention to that until I had either unravelled its meaning or was convinced of its impossibility—afterwards to take up the others and proceed as before.

All of this I did in the course of time, but failed so completely that my hopes of solving the mystery were well nigh abandoned. My thoughts, however were constantly upon it, and the figures contained in each paper, in their regular order, were fixed in my memory. My impression was that each figure represented a letter, but as the numbers so greatly exceeded the letters of the alphabet, that many different numbers represented the same letter. With this idea, a test was made of every book I could procure, by numbering its letters and comparing the numbers with those of the manuscript; all to no purpose, however, until the Declaration of Independence afforded the clue to one of the papers, and revived all my hopes. To enable my readers to better understand the explanation of this paper, the Declaration of Independence is given herewith, and will be of interest to those designing to follow up my investigations. When I first made this discovery, I thought I had the key to the whole, but soon ascertained that further work was necessary before my task was completed. The encouragement afforded, however, by this discovery enabled me to proceed, and I have persisted in my labors to the present time. Now, as I have already said, I am forced by circumstances to devote my time to other pursuits, and to abandon hopes which were destined never to be realized.

The following is the letter addressed to Mr. Morriss by Beale, and dated St. Louis, May, 1822, and was the latest communication ever received from him: