The celebrated stone of Taunton River may date its hieroglyphics from the time that Norwegian navigators visited the shores of "Great Ireland." "Anglo-American antiquaries have made known an inscription, supposed to be Phoenician, and which is engraved on the rocks of Dighton, near the banks of Taunton River, twelve leagues south of Boston.... The natives who inhabited these countries at the time of the first European settlements preserved an ancient tradition, according to which strangers in wooden houses had sailed up Taunton River, formerly called Assoonet. These strangers, having conquered the red men, had engraved marks on the rock, which is now covered by the waters of the river. Count de Gebelin does not hesitate, with the learned Dr. Stiles, to regard these marks as a Carthaginian inscription. He says, with that enthusiasm which is natural to him, but which is highly injurious in discussions of this kind, that this inscription comes happily at the moment from the New World to confirm his ideas on the origin of nations, and that it is clearly demonstrated to be a Phoenician monument, a picture which in the foreground represents an alliance between the American people and the foreign nation, coming by the winds of the north from a rich and industrious country. I have carefully examined the four drawings of the celebrated stone of Taunton River, which M. Loot published in England in the Memoirs of the Antiquarian Society." (_Archæologia_, vol. viii., p. 296.) "Far from recognizing a symmetrical arrangement of simple letters and syllabic characters, I discover a drawing scarcely traced, like those that have been found on the rocks of Norway, and in almost all the countries inhabited by the Scandinavian nations." (Suhm, _Samlinger til ten Danske Historic_, b. ii., p. 215.) "In the sketch we distinguish, from the form of the heads, five human figures surrounding an animal with horns, much higher in the fore than in the hind part of the body."--Humboldt's _Researches in America_, vol. i., p. 153. No. V.