30. See pp. 77, 78 of part I, Y. M. M. I. A. Manual for 1903-4. It is unthinkable that this effort to publish a garbled edition of the Book of Mormon was unknown to Grandin and those employed in his establishment. 31. See chapter VIII, where this incident is treated and the fact pointed out that the Prophet's precautions had protected the work from the effects of such tricks as this described by Tucker. CHAPTER XXIV. INDIRECT EXTERNAL EVIDENCES--AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. In dealing with the indirect external evidences to the truth of the Book of Mormon supplied by American antiquities, embracing in that term archaeology, mythology, traditions, ethnology, languages, etc., it should be observed that the Book of Mormon is not a specific work upon any of these subjects. Nor is it a work on physical geography; nor even a history, in the modern sense of that term. Furthermore, while the purpose of the book is mainly religious, it is not a formal treatise even upon religion. But while the Book of Mormon has limitations in all the directions noted, it is a fact that American antiquities, mythologies, traditions, etc., may be of great importance in sustaining its truth. I therefore begin the consideration of this branch of evidence by inquiring what conditions respecting the location and nature of American monuments of civilization the Book of Mormon demands. I. _What the Book of Mormon Requires as to the Location and Character of the Jaredite Civilization._ It has been shown in a preceding chapter [1] that the first people who inhabited North America after the flood were a colony that came from the Euphrates Valley, about the time of the confusion of languages at Babel, under the leadership of a prophet of the name of Moriancumr, and his brother Jared; that this colony made their first settlement somewhere in the region of country known in modern times as Central America; that they called their first city Moron, which from the time of its establishment, with brief, intermittent periods, remained the seat of government and the chief center of the civilization of the great Jaredite nation, up to the time of the latter's destruction, in the early part of the sixth century B. C.--a period of sixteen hundred years. From the City of Moron the Jaredites extended their colonization schemes southward along the isthmus to South America, and northward to the great lakes. Their greatest activities, however, and the centers of their civilization were in Central America; and it is there we must look for the most extensive and enduring monuments of civilization in the western world; and expect the monuments to have some of the characteristics of the monuments of the ancient civilization of the Euphrates Valley. [2] II. _What the Book of Mormon Requires as to the Location, Extent and Nature of the Nephite Civilization._