unusual markings upon this object.
Of course that is not to jump to the conclusion that they were cuneiform
characters that looked like finger-prints.

Altogether, I think that in some of our past expressions, we must have
been very efficient, if the experience of Mr. Symons be typical, so
indefinite are we becoming here. Just here we are interested in many
things that have been found, especially in the United States, which
speak of a civilization, or of many civilizations not indigenous to
this earth. One trouble is in trying to decide whether they fell here
from the sky, or were left behind by visitors from other worlds. We have
a notion that there have been disasters aloft, and that coins have
dropped here: that inhabitants of this earth found them or saw them
fall, and then made coins imitatively: it may be that coins were
showered here by something of a tutelary nature that undertook to
advance us from the stage of barter to the use of a medium. If coins
should be identified as Roman coins, we've had so much experience with
"identifications" that we know a phantom when we see one--but, even so,
how could Roman coins have got to North America--far in the interior of
North America--or buried under the accumulation of centuries of
soil--unless they did drop from--wherever the first Romans came from?
Ignatius Donnelly, in _Atlantis_, gives a list of objects that have been
found in mounds that are supposed to antedate all European influence in
America: lathe-made articles, such as traders--from somewhere--would
supply to savages--marks of the lathe said to be unmistakable. Said to
be: of course we can't accept that anything is unmistakable. In the
_Rept. Smithson. Inst._, 1881-619, there is an account, by Charles C.
Jones, of two silver crosses that were found in Georgia. They are
skillfully made, highly ornamented crosses, but are not conventional
crucifixes: all arms of equal length. Mr. Jones is a good
positivist--that De Sota had halted at the "precise" spot where these
crosses were found. But the spirit of negativeness that lurks in all
things said to be "precise" shows itself in that upon one of these
crosses is an inscription that has no meaning in Spanish or any other
known, terrestrial language:

"IYNKICIDU," according to Mr. Jones. He thinks that this is a name, and
that there is an aboriginal ring to it, though I should say, myself,
that he was thinking of the far-distant Incas: that the Spanish donor
cut