| Leo X De Vix 1520 | The tree, &c. | Ls {TN: Cross icon—inverted U} |
"We have here the true chronology of the pontificate of Leo X., and, without doubt, the year in which the inscriptions were made. This pontiff came to the papal chair in the year 1518 or 1514, and consequently the sixth year of his pontificate would be as stated above. The inscription may be thus translated:—'Leo X. by the grace of God; sixth year of his pontificate—1520.' The stone was doubtless designed as a sepulchral monument, and the letters Ls were probably the initials of the name of the person whose grave it designated. The Cross informs us that the deceased was a Catholic, and the inverted U, was probably some other emblem, which the hand of time had in a great measure effaced. The supposition is not incredible that this stone was carved by a Spanish hand on or near the spot where it was found, and there deposited by him. Mexico was settled by the Spaniards in 1521. But previously to this period, Spanish adventurers frequently arrived upon the American coast. Florida was discovered by them in 1502. The French voyager Verrazano explored nearly the whole coast of the present United States in 1524, but a little subsequent to the date which forms the subject of our inquiry. And De Soto, who had been constituted Governor of Cuba and President of Florida, performed his celebrated expedition into the interior of America, having with him six hundred men, as early as 1538. He spent four years in the country, and as Florida then extended to an indefinite point in the north, embracing all that tract of country which has since been called Virginia, and as mention is made by his historian of 'extreme cold,' and of a place called Saquechama, it is reasonable to conjecture that they penetrated to the north as far as the Susquehanna. [FN] But in the course of his travels, he fell in with a body of natives, who had with them a Spaniard by the name of John Ortez, of Seville. He had then been a captive for nearly ten years. It is not incredible, when all these facts are taken into consideration, that eight years anterior to the time of Ortez being taken prisoner, two or three, or half a dozen Spaniards, should have been taken by misfortune or the spirit of adventure to Pompey Hill, where one of them dying, the survivor or survivors prepared and placed this monument over his remains. It is also quite possible, that the visit of the Spanish adventurers, to which the narrative furnished by De Witt Clinton and recited above, relates, was at a period much earlier than that which he assigns for it. De Soto himself was amused by similar stories told him by the savages of the existence of gold and silver in regions that were always beyond him. In this way he was taken many hundred leagues into the bosom of a country filled only with savages, and never before trodden by the foot of an European. But he returned vexed to find that he had been amused only with golden dreams. The story of a lake at the north, whose bottom was lined with silver, was sufficient to fire the bosom of a Spaniard with an ungovernable spirit of daring in pursuit of that object; and as the date of this enterprise was left to be established by tradition, that erring chronicler of events, it is altogether probable that a mistake in time, sufficient to explain the subject of our inquiry, was committed. However this may be, there can be little doubt but Spaniards, carried there as captives or allured by the love of gold, were at Pompey Hill as early as 1520.—Lectures of Rev. Mr. Adams, of Syracuse, (N. Y.)"
[FN] See Sandford's Aborigines, p. cxiv. note. Also, "Yates and Moulton's Hist."
No. XIX.
[Reference from Page 487.]
Since the text of the present volume was written, the Antiquarian world has been gratified by a publication issued by the Society of Northern Antiquities of Copenhagen, which is creating a great sensation among men of letters. It is entitled
"Antiquitates Americanae sive Scriptores Septentrionales rerum Ante-Columbianarum in America. (Antiquities of America, or Northern writers of things in America before Columbus.) Hafniæ, 1837, 4to. pp. 486."
The following summary notice of this most important work is copied from the New Haven Chronicle of the Church, of December 15, 1837:—