[Illustration: Magazine artist’s view of Stone Mountain in ante-bellum times.] The earliest history of the mountain was literally dug up by Lewis Larson, Jr., assistant professor of anthropology at Georgia State College in Atlanta. He explored the present bottom of the lake around the western side while the dam was being built. Along with more recent artifacts, Mr. Larson and his helpers collected shards of soapstone bowls and dishes, carved and used by Stone Age people possibly five thousand years ago, long before early Americans learned to shape and bake pottery. Local historians have tried hard to find evidence that Hernando de Soto visited Stone Mountain. Actually, if that old conquistador had set out to touch all the points his name has been associated with, his iron-clad ghost would still be riding hard and only half way through its itinerary. De Soto certainly did not see this rock, or his chroniclers would have described it in detail as a large-scale replica of the Gibraltar they left behind. The first white man to see Stone Mountain seems to have been Captain Juan Pardo, sent by the Spaniards in 1567 to encircle Georgia with forts. He followed somewhat the route taken by de Soto’s ill-fated expedition. Pardo fared some better. He got back to St. Augustine with his life, but he did little fortifying. Pardo regarded as his most important achievement the discovery of what he called Crystal Mountain, a great mountain that glistened in the sun and was surrounded with diamonds and rubies and other precious stones lying on the ground for the picking up. Unfortunately, Indians kept him and his men too busy for gem collecting at that time. The captain spent the rest of his life at St. Augustine trying to raise a force of 500 men for another trip to Crystal Mountain, promising to make every one of them rich, as well as any who would help finance the expedition. Since he had failed in his fort-building mission and had not been able to pick up a pocketful of gems, even when he was walking—or running—over them, he was unable to find 500 men willing to risk life and fortune on the venture. Pardo’s diamonds and rubies are still to be found on top of the ground at the base of the mountain. They are crystals of quartz, fully as beautiful as gem stones, but not so rare, and therefore not so valuable. Many of today’s visitors, less hurried than the captain and his men, pick up a few for souvenirs. The first eye-witness description of Stone Mountain in English appears to have been an account written by a British officer and published in London in 1788. The Britisher almost certainly came into the area to incite Indians to fight against the colonists in the Revolutionary War. Unlettered traders probably viewed it earlier than that, but seeing no profit, dismissed it as being of no consequence to themselves.