are patches of stucco, which, like the mortar, is made of coarse sand and shell lime, and as hard as the stones it covers. Governor Gibbs remembers the appearance of the tower more than forty years ago, when it was partially covered with the same hard stucco upon its exterior surface. Doubtless it was originally covered within and without with plaster, and the now rough columns, with mere indications of capitals and bases of the Doric form, were handsomely wrought, the whole structure exhibiting taste and beauty. During the possession of Rhode Island by the British, in the Revolution, the tower was more perfect than now, having a roof, and the walls were three or four feet higher than at present. * The British used it for an ammunition magazine, and when they evacuated the island, they attempted to demolish the old "mill" by igniting a keg of powder within it! But the strong walls resisted the Vandals, and the only damage the edifice sustained was the loss of its roof and two or three feet of its upper masonry. Such is the Old Tower at Newport at the present time. Its early history is yet unwritten, and may forever remain so. **
* Governor Gibbs showed me a Continental bill of the denomination of five dollars (not signed), which his son found in a crevice in the tower.
** There has been much patient investigation, with a great deal of speculation, concerning this ancient edifice, but no satisfactory conclusion has yet been obtained. Of its existence prior to the English emigration to America there is now but little doubt; and it is asserted that the Indians, of whom Mr. Coddington and other early settlers upon Aquitneck (now Rhode Island) solicited information concerning the structure, had no tradition respecting its origin. Because it was called a "mill" in some old documents, some have argued, or, rather, have flippantly asserted, that it was built by the early English settlers for a wind-mill. Thus Mr. Cooper disposes of the matter in his preface to Red Rover. A little patient inquiry would have given him a different conclusion; and if the structure is really ante-colonial, and perhaps ante-Columbian, its history surely is worthy of investigation. That it was converted into and used for a wind-mill by some of the early settlers of Newport, there is no doubt, for it was easily convertible to such use, although not by a favorable arrangement. The English settlement upon the Island was commenced in 1636, at the north end, and in 1639 the first house was erected on the site of Newport, by Nicholas Easton. Mention is made in the colonial records of the erection of a wind-mill by Peter Easton, in 1663, twenty-five years after the founding of Newport; and this was evidently the first mill erected there, from the fact that it was considered of sufficient importance to the colony to induce the General Court to reward Mr. Easton for his enterprise, by a grant of a tract of fine land, a mile in length, lying along what is still known as Easton's Beack. That mill was a wooden structure, and stood upon the land now occupied by the North Burying-ground, in the upper suburbs of Newport. The land on which the Old Tower stands once belonged to Governor Benedict Arnold, and in his will, bearing the date of 1678, forty years after the settlement, he mentions the "stone mill," the tower having evidently been used for that purpose. Its form, its great solidity, and its construction upon columns, forbid the idea that it was originally erected for a mill; and certainly, if a common wind-mill, made of timber, was so highly esteemed by the people, as we havs seen, the construction of such an edifice, so superior to any dwelling or church in the colony, would have received special attention from the magistrates, and the historians of the day. And wherefore, for such a purpose, were the foundation-stones wrought into spheres, and the whole structure stuccoed within and without? When, in 1837, the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen published the result of their ten years' investigations concerning the discovery of America by the Northmen in the tenth century, in a volume entitled "Antiquitates Americana," the old "mill" at Newport, the rock inscription at Dighton, in Massachusetts, and the discovery of skeletons, evidently of a race different from the Indians, * elicited the earnest attention of inquirers, as subjects in some way connected with those early discoveries. Dr. Webb (whom I have mentioned as extending to me his friendly services at the rooms of the Historical Society of Massachusetts), who was then a resident of Providence, and secretary to the Rhode Island Historical Society, opened a correspondence with Charles C. Rafn, the secretary to the Royal Society of Copenhagen. Dr. Webb employed Mr. Catherwood to make drawings of the "mill," and these, with a particular account of the structure, he transmitted to Professor Rafn. Here was opened for the society a new field of inquiry, the products of which were published, with engravings from Mr. Catherwood's drawings. According to Professor Rafn, the architecture of this building is in the ante-Gothic style, which was common in the north and west of Europe from the eighth to the twelfth century. "The circular form, the low columns, their thickness in proportion to their distance from each other, and the entire want of ornament," he says, "all point out this epoch." He imagines that it was used for a baptistry, and accounts for the absence of buildings of a similar character by the abundance of wood in America. The brevity of the sojourn of the Northmen here was doubtless another, and perhaps principal reason, why similar structures were not erected. The fact that the navigators of Sweden, Norway, and Iceland visited and explored the American coast as far as the shores of Connecticut, and probably more southerly, during the tenth and eleventh centuries (five hundred years before the voyages of Columbus), appears to be too well attested to need further notice here. For the proofs, the reader is referred to the interesting work alluded to, "Antiquitates Americana." The inscription upon the rock at Diffton has given rise to much speculation and to many theories. The rock lies upon the east side of Taunton River, between high and low water marks, so that it is covered and exposed at every ebb and flow of the tide. It is an insulated mass of fine-grained granite, or grunstein, lying northwest and southeast on the sands of the river. Its length is eleven feet, and its height four and a half feet. It has a regular surface and nearly smooth, whereon the inscription is carved. The inscription presents four parts or divisions, and evidently refers to a combat. On the left is a figure armed with a bow and arrow, and may represent an Indian. Next to it is an inscription composed of Runic or Phoenician characters, doubtless a history of the event there partially pictured. Further to the right is a vessel, and on the extreme right are two figures, differing from the one on the left, without bows and arrows, and evidently connected with the vessel. These and the vessel doubtless indicate them as voyagers from a distant land. ** Between the figures and the boat are Runic or Phoenician characters. The question arises, By whom was the inscription made? The Phoenician characters seem to be proof that those ancient navigators visited the American coast and made this record of combat with the Indians; and hence some reject the opinion of others that the rock was inscribed by the hand of a Scandinavian. When we remember that the Phoenicians were for many ages in the undisputed possession of the traffic of the Baltic, around which clustered the Scandinavian nations, and that Runic, or ancient German inscriptions, in Phoenician characters, have been discovered in abundance in all the countries formerly occupied by these nations, the inference is plainly correct, that the Scandinavians received their alphabet from the Phoenicians.* In the Journal des Debats of Paris, a letter was published, dated Copenhagen, February 5, 1850, in which it is mentioned that Dr. Pierre André Munch, professor at the University of Christina, then in Copenhagen, had just presented to the Society of Northern Antiquaries an extremely curious manuscript, in a state of excellent preservation, which he discovered and obtained during his voyage, in 1849, to the Orkney Isles. This manuscript, which the professor refers to the ninth and tenth centuries, contains several episodes, in the Latin language, on the history of Norway, presenting some important facts, heretofore entirely unknown, which illustrate the obscure ages that in Norway preceded the introduction of Christianity. Dr. Munch also presented to the society several fae-similes of Runic inscriptions, which he discovered in the Orkney Isles and in the north of Scotland. It is probable these discoveries may cast some light upon the obscure subject under consideration. In the record of the voyages to America of the Northmen, a severe combat with the natives (skrellings) is mentioned, and various circumstances show that in the vicinity of this inscription the battle occurred. Is it not reasonable to infer that those Scandinavians, acquainted with the Phoenician alphabet, made a record of the battle upon the rock, by a mingling of alphabetical characters and pictorial hieroglyphics? And may not the same people have reared the Old Tower at Newport, in the vicinity, for a baptistry, with a view of erecting a church, and making a permanent settlement there? for it must be remembered that at that time those Northern nations were nominal Christians. The records of their voyages were compiled by Bishop Thorlack, of Iceland, a grandson of Snorre's, son of Gudrida, who was born in Wineland, or Massachusetts, in 1008. The subject is one of great interest, and worthy of further and more minute inquiries than have yet been made.
* On this point consult Fehlegel's fourth lecture on The History of Literature.
** The late Bertel Thorwalsden, the greatest sculptor of our time, was a lineal descendant of Snorre.
