or fossil bird-tracks of Dr. Hitchcock, but with less regularity or apparent design than is displayed by those remarkable geological monuments.  These are rather the non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum.  Resolved to leave no door open to cavil, I first of all attempted the elucidation of this remarkable example of lithick literature by the ordinary modes, but with no adequate return for my labour.  I then considered myself amply justified in resorting to that heroick treatment the felicity of which, as applied by the great Bentley to Milton, had long ago enlisted my admiration.  Indeed, I had already made up my mind, that, in case good-fortune should throw any such invaluable record in my way, I would proceed with it in the following simple and satisfactory method.  After a cursory examination, merely sufficing for an approximative estimate of its length, I would write down a hypothetical inscription based upon antecedent probabilities, and then proceed to extract from the characters engraven on the stone a meaning as nearly as possible conformed to this a priori product of my own ingenuity.  The result more than justified my hopes, inasmuch as the two inscriptions were made without any great violence to tally in all essential particulars.  I then proceeded, not without some anxiety, to my second test, which was, to read the Runick letters diagonally, and again with the same success.  With an excitement pardonable under the circumstances, yet tempered with thankful humility, I now applied my last and severest trial, my experimentum crucis.  I turned the stone, now doubly precious in my eyes, with scrupulous exactness upside down.  The physical exertion so far displaced my spectacles as to derange for a moment the focus of vision.  I confess that it was with some tremulousness that I readjusted them upon my nose, and prepared my mind to bear with calmness any disappointment that might ensue.  But, O albo dies notanda lapillo! what was my delight to find that the change of position had effected none in the sense of the writing, even by so much as a single letter!  I was now, and justly, as I think, satisfied of the conscientious exactness of my interpretation.  It is as follows:—­

HERE

BJARNA GRIMOLFSSON

FIRST DRANK CLOUD-BROTHER

THROUGH CHILD-OF-LAND-AND-WATER: 

that is, drew smoke through a reed stem.  In other words, we have here a record of the first smoking of the herb Nicotiana Tabacum by a European on this continent.  The probable results of this discovery are so vast as to baffle conjecture.  If it be objected, that the smoking of a pipe would hardly justify the setting up of a memorial stone, I answer, that even now the Moquis Indian, ere he takes his first whiff, bows reverently toward the four quarters of the sky in succession, and that the