The Secret of the Earth

by Charles Willing Beale

"Then you think nature placed it there?"

"Neither; but what is this?"

He was still examining the face of the thing studiously, with both hands and eyes. I stooped down to examine it. There was a roughness or indentation, which did not seem to be natural. Scraping the moss away from the crevices, we discovered to my amazement the following inscription, which I herewith give from a careful copy in my note book

Inscription

There could be no possible doubt about this being an intentional design, but in what tongue, or what it meant was a mystery. We puzzled over it for an hour, when Torrence suggested that they might be English letters, rudely and ignorantly carved. "For instance," he said, "the first might very well be an N. The second is evidently an E; while the third is unmistakably intended for an I. Now the fourth is the same as the first. The fifth cannot well be other than an L. The sixth is the same as the second, and the last is a T." When we looked at it in this way, it seemed clear enough. Indeed what else could it be? But what the word meant, remained a mystery. Suddenly it occurred to us that it might be more than one word. "Suppose," said Torrence, "that the last five letters are intended to form the word 'Inlet'—a pronounced feature of the coast of this island—and that the first two stand for North East. There we seem to have it—North East Inlet—the stone probably refers to something of interest in, or about the North East Inlet of the island!"

Surely we had solved the problem. But when I reminded Torrence that we had been searching for traces of his alleged inhabitant, and that he should not be surprised at this discovery, he said:

"True enough; but exactly where they would be, or what they would look like, or even if this was the right island, I could not tell; but now I feel sure that I am right."

"The stone was evidently put here by some one," I remarked.

"Undoubtedly. There is not the slightest appearance of its having been deposited by nature; and the letters were cut with rough tools, by ignorant hands."