othing either French or Spanish
about this coin. A legend upon it is said to be "somewhere between
Arabic and Phoenician, without being either." Prof. Winchell (_Sparks
from a Geologist's Hammer_, p. 170) says of the crude designs upon this
coin, which was in his possession--scrawls of an animal and of a
warrior, or of a cat and a goldfish, whichever be convenient--that they
had been neither stamped nor engraved, but "looked as if etched with an
acid." That is a method unknown in numismatics of this earth. As to the
crudity of design upon this coin, and something else--that, though the
"warrior" may be, by due disregards, either a cat or a goldfish, we have
to note that his headdress is typical of the American Indian--could be
explained, of course, but for fear that we might be instantly translated
to the Positive Absolute, which may not be absolutely desirable, we
prefer to have some flaws or negativeness in our own expressions.

Data of more than the thrice-accursed:

Tablets of stone, with the ten commandments engraved upon them, in
Hebrew, said to have been found in mounds in the United States:

Masonic emblems said to have been found in mounds in the United States.

We're upon the borderline of our acceptances, and we're amorphous in the
uncertainties and mergings of our outline. Conventionally, or, with no
real reason for so doing, we exclude these things, and then, as grossly
and arbitrarily and irrationally--though our attempt is always to
approximate away from these negative states--as ever a Kepler, Newton,
or Darwin made his selections, without which he could not have seemed
to be, at all, because every one of them is now seen to be an illusion,
we accept that other lettered things have been found in mounds in the
United States. Of course we do what we can to make the selection seem
not gross and arbitrary and irrational. Then, if we accept that
inscribed things of ancient origin have been found in the United States;
that cannot be attributed to any race indigenous to the western
hemisphere; that are not in any 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