of written characters are uniformly in black, while the pictoral portions of what may perhaps be considered representative signs, are in red and blue, chiefly the former, and the blue appears for the most part as a back ground in some of the pages." From these testimonies we learn two facts, namely, The Mayas of Central America had a written language, and, they did not keep their records on Metal plates. The next question that demands attention is, Was the alphabet of the Mayas such as Joseph Smith represents? This question we answer with an emphatic, No. We can show the Maya alphabet and we defy any man to show a particle of resemblance between those characters and Mr. Smith's so-called Egyptian! No resemblance whatever can be shown between the two sets of characters. In order to see, hence, the utter falsity of the Book of Mormon we only need to remember the fact that the Maya alphabet was in use by the inhabitants of Central America at the very time and place where the Book of Mormon says the Nephites lived. And further, we need to remember that this Maya alphabet was the only written alphabet used by the ancient inhabitants of Central America. This being true a ten year old child can see that the Book of Mormon is a miserable fraud. The testimony of scholars and antiquarians is unanimous that no evidence exists of any written language except the Maya on either continent.
Short, page 419, says: "No well authenticated mound builder's hieroglyphics have as yet come to light. The "Grove Creek mound tablet" we believe is now shown unquestionably to be an archaeological fraud." Of Peru, from Baldwin's Ancient America, pp. 254, 255, and Bancroft, vol. 4, p. 792, we learn, "The art of writing in alphabetical characters, so far as appears, was unknown to the Peruvians in the time of the Incas. No Peruvian books existed at that time, and no inscriptions have been found in any of the ruins. They had a method of recording events, keeping accounts, and making reports to the government by means of the Quippu. This was
