Spaulding, being an invalid, possessed of a good education and habits of study, naturally took to literary work, which he probably commenced soon after 1809, [13] and continued until his death in October, 1816. During this seven years he seems to have written several other manuscripts [14] besides the two with which we are directly concerned. [Footnote 13: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 279; "New Light on Mormonism," 13-14.] [Footnote 14: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 285; "New Light on Mormonism," 20.] Necessarily Spaulding's surroundings gave some direction to the course of his literary efforts. Environed as he was in a country where once dwelt the mound-builders, and having himself caused one of the mounds to be opened, with the resulting discovery of bones and relics of a supposedly prehistoric civilization, [15] like thousands before him, he was led to speculate upon the character of that civilization and the origin of those ancient peoples. Josiah Priest, in his "Wonders of Nature and Providence" (1824), quotes over forty authors, half of whom are Americans, and all of whom, prior to 1824, advocated an Israelitish origin of the American Indian. Some of these dated as far back as Clavigaro, a Catholic priest in the seventeenth century. [Footnote 15: "New Light on Mormonism," 14.] In Spaulding's first writing of his manuscript story, he pretended to find a roll of parchment in a stone box within a cave. In the Latin language, this contained an account of a party of Roman sea voyagers, who, in the time of Constantine, were, by storms, drifted ashore on the American continent. One of their number left this record of their travels, of Indian wars and customs, which record Spaulding pretends to have found and to translate. [16] How that resembles a synopsis of the Book of Mormon! [Footnote 16: "The Manuscript Found." For Howe's synopsis see "Mormonism Unveiled," 288. Whitney's "History of Utah," 49-51.]