here they hid the
sacred tablets, which remained concealed until they were
miraculously discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827.
There is, of course, no element of tradition in this story. It
is all pure fiction, and of a very clumsy sort, such as might
easily be devised by an ignorant man accustomed to the language
of the Bible; and of course it was suggested by the old notion
of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The references are to
_The Book of Mormon_, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.]

[Sidenote: Shell-mounds.]

The first group of these observations and discoveries relate to
"middens" or shell-heaps. On the banks of the Damariscotta river in
Maine are some of the most remarkable shell-heaps in the world. With an
average thickness of six or seven feet, they rise in places to a height
of twenty-five feet. They consist almost entirely of huge oyster-shells
often ten inches in length and sometimes much longer. The shells belong
to a salt-water species. In some places "there is an appearance of
stratification covered by an alternation of shells and earth, as if the
deposition of shells had been from time to time interrupted, and a
vegetable mould had covered the surface." In these heaps have been found
fragments of pottery and of the bones of such edible animals as the
moose and deer. "At the very foundation of one of the highest heaps," in
a situation which must for long ages have been undisturbed, Mr. Edward
Morse "found the remains of an ancient fire-place, where he exhumed
charcoal, bones, and pottery."[2] The significant circumstance is that
"at the present time oysters are only found in very small numbers, too
small to make it an object to gather them," and so far as memory and
tradition can reach, such seems to have been the case. The great size of
the heap, coupled with the notable change in the distribution of this
mollusk since the heap was abandoned, implies a very considerable lapse
of time since the vestiges of human occupation were first left here.
Similar conclusions have been drawn from the banks or mounds of shells
on the St. John's river in Florida,[3] on the Alabama river, at Grand
Lake on the lower Mississippi, and at San Pablo in the bay of San
Francisco. Thus at various points from Maine to California, and in
connection with one particular kind of memorial, we find records of the
presence of man at a per