American Antiquities: Corroborative of the Book of Mormon (12 March 1859)

AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES,
CORROBORATIVE OF THE BOOK OF MORMON.

(Continued from page 163.)

(From the New York Herald.)

“San Diego, California, Dec. 10th, 1849.
“Having promised you the earliest information relative to any discoveries of interest to the antiquarian that we might make while exploring, for this purpose, the hitherto unknown countries of northern California and New Mexico, I hasten to give you, and through you to the world, an account of the actual existence of the ancient ruins, which, whether it regards their immense extent or the size and grandeur of a single structure, have no equal on the face of the globe, and compared with which the ruined temples and edifices of Southern Mexico and Yucatan, discovered by Stephens and other travellers, dwindle into the most minor insignificance. And even the largest of the Egyptian pyramids, however vast, is but a child's toy in comparison to the chief structure of this group of mighty ruins; and which has and probably ever will remain an enduring memento of a race of men inhabiting this continent long anterior to the time that Divine revelation or the Book of Genesis gives as the period of the creation of the world. However startling the assertion may appear to a large majority of the Christian world, there is the most incontrovertible evidence exhibited in the symbolic writings and inscriptions upon every part of these now dilapidated monuments of their having existed from before, and during, aud even long after the general deluge, admitting such an event to have taken place. But the most interesting as well as satisfactory record as yet deciphered from the numerous hieroglyphics that everywhere abound is a savage and cruel people from the north and east, making a slow but sure conquest of the beautiful land, waging a war of extermination, sparing no captive. But of this, as well as their general history from a remote antiquity, I will give you in a series of letters, and as fast as we can satisfactorily and correctly translate it. I will say, however, in addition to the foregoing, that the writings, as we call them, are entirely made up of pictures, symbols, or hieroglyphics, requiring the most careful, close, and laborious attention, investigation, and comparison, in order to trace both backward and forward from a certain period the connection that exists between them. For, unlike anything heretofore discovered on this continent, or indeed in the whole world, we here have presented to our views, as we now firmly believe, the unbroken history of a people that existed not only for a great length of time since the building of the Egyptian pyramids, but contemporary with them, and, what is more wonderful still, far back and yet still farther into the mazes of antiquity. For not only do we find the characters so common to all the ruins of Central America, but, tracing them back, without as yet knowing precisely their import, we reach by progressive though receding steps a period when they were identical with and purely the Egyptian hieroglyphic, easily deciphered and as easily understood. But on arriving at this period, we find these also taking their rise or having their origin in other characters or symbols as far removed from the more common Egyptian hieroglyphics as are the characters the last in use by this highly intelligent but extinct race, and yet as clearly connected as is the now written though gradually changed language of the last ten centuries. Permit me here to make a single digression. You recollect the strong belief I entertained and expressed to you of the existence somewhere on the American continent, if not totally obliterated by the corrodings of time, of the works of a people, which, if a record could be obtained, would carry us back to a period in the age of the world of which all history is silent. My predictions were based upon the light obtained by the recent examination of the interior of a newly-discovered pyramid in lower Egypt, which for ages has remained unknown, from having been entirely buried beneath the sands of the desert. There, in one of its hidden recesses, upon a table of imperishable stone, is the record of the existence of a country beyond the most distant islands of the Eastern Seas, inhabited by a numerous, happy, and highly intelligent people, and from, whom the mysteries of writing by symbols and a knowledge of the arts and sciences had been obtained. And never was prediction or conjecture more amply verified. America must be that country beyond the Eastern Seas; and though its numerous and happy people are all gone, and century after century of storm and sunshine, earthquake and convulsion, and the spoliations of succeeding races of barbarous men have passed over it, yet all combined has not been able to blot out the evidences of their superior learning and skill in architectural science, as exhibited in the numerous and vastly magnificent structures scattered here and there over a large part of Central and Northern America; and the veil of obscurity that has been so long wrapt around these relics of an unknown people seems to be drawn aside, and an era in the world’s history introduced, of which, though with all the accumulated learning of centuries, we know nothing. … By an easy ascent over a beautiful country, covered with every possible variety of forest timber, with here and there the residence of some miserable Mexican half-breed, we reached the summit of an elevated table of land, extending to the south and west in trees and piles of stones innumerable, and in every form and position imaginable. For the most part, however, the blocks are from 10 to 14 inches square and from 15 inches to 5 feet in length, but many of them broken in numberless fragments, and lying in ridges from 3 to 15 feet high, and forming enclosures of every conceivable shape and size; but the greater part about 40 feet square, while some were 60, 80, and even 100 feet, with ridges of the same material crossing their centres, at right angles. Near the centre of the Plain is an immense mound or pyramid or loose stones, 200 feet square at its base, and 40 feet high, having an irregular crater or basin in its top 15 feet deep. Surrounding this pyramid, 140 yards from its base, in a perfect circle, and at equal distances from each other, are seven circular ridges of the same everlasting loose and broken fragments of stone 60 yards in circumference at their base on the inner side, with an average of 20 feet in height. In the centre of each is a conical mound of the same material, and about the same height, with one exception; and this is the only instance where anything like a perfect wall remains visible amid this vast assemblage of unmeaning ruins. In this is a round solid column of masonry, 36 feet high, 30 feet in circumference at the surface, with an accumulation of stone about its base 8 feet high, that must have, at some greatly remote period, fallen from its top.

(To be continued.)