Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/152

146 language ever heard of in the eastern hemisphere—there's nothing to it but to turn non-Euclidian and try to conceive of a third "hemisphere," or to accept that there has been intercourse between the western hemisphere and some other world.

But there is a peculiarity to these inscribed objects. They remind me of the records left, by Sir John Franklin, in the Arctic; but, also, of attempts made by relief expeditions to communicate with the Franklin expedition. The lost explorers cached their records—or concealed them conspicuously in mounds. The relief expeditions sent up balloons, from which messages were dropped broadcast. Our data are of things that have been cached, and of things that seem to have been dropped

Or a Lost Expedition from—Somewhere.

Explorers from somewhere, and their inability to return—then, a long, sentimental, persistent attempt, in the spirit of our own Arctic relief-expeditions—at least to establish communication

What if it may have succeeded?

We think of India—the millions of natives who are ruled by a small band of esoterics—only because they receive support and direction from—somewhere else—or from England.

In 1838, Mr. A. B. Tomlinson, owner of the great mound at Grave Creek, West Virginia, excavated the mound. He said that, in the presence of witnesses, he had found a small, flat, oval stone—or disk—upon which were engraved alphabetic characters.

Col. Whittelsey, an expert in these matters, says that the stone is now "universally regarded by archæologists as a fraud": that, in his opinion, Mr. Tomlinson had been imposed upon.

Avebury, Prehistoric Times, p. 271:

"I mention it because it has been the subject of much discussion, but it is now generally admitted to be a fraud. It is inscribed with Hebrew characters, but the forger has copied the modern instead of the ancient form of the letters."

As I have said, we're as irritable here, under the oppressions of the anthropologists as ever were slaves in the south toward superiorities from "poor white trash." When we finally reverse our relative positions we shall give lowest place to the anthropologists. A Dr. Gray does at least look at a fish before he conceives of a miraculous origin for it. We shall have to submerge Lord Avebury far below him—if we accept that the stone from Grave Creek is generally regarded as a fraud by eminent authorities who did not know it from some other object—or, in general, that so decided an