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 archaeologists 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 opinion must be the product of either deliberate
disregard or ignorance or fatigue. The stone belongs to a class of
phenomena that is repulsive to the System. It will not assimilate with
the System. Let such an object be heard of by such a systematist as
Avebury, and the mere mention of it is as nearly certainly the stimulus
to a conventional reaction as is a charged body to an electro