he made and published a full confession confirming in every important particular the history of the deception as published in the Fort Dodge pamphlet in 1870. This confession should forever have settled the thirty years’ controversy, but thousands of people continued to believe in the “petrified giant” to the end of their lives.
A graduate of the divinity school of Yale College, Alexander McWhorter, after long study and investigation, a few years ago evolved a new theory as to the “Onondaga Giant,” that it was a Phenician idol, as proved by an inscription he had discovered on the figure, and a crescent shaped wound on the left side. He said in conclusion his investigations:
“We only know that at some distant period the great statue was brought in a ship of Tarshish across the sea of Atl, was lightly covered with twigs and flowers, and these with gravel.”
Dr. White continues:
“McWhorter’s theory found one very eminent convert across the ocean in a place where he might least have expected it. While residing at Berlin, as minister of the United States, I one day received a letter from an American student of the University at Halle, stating that he had been requested by the eminent Dr. Schlottmann, instructor of Hebrew, to write to me for information regarding the Phenician statue described by Alexander McWhorter.
Dr. White in reply gave the true history of the fraud but, as incredible as it may appear, the learned Dr. Schlottmann declared that he was not convinced, and that he still believed the Cardiff figure to be a Phoenician statue bearing a most important inscription.
The original Cardiff Giant made from Fort Dodge gypsum was on exhibition at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901, and though thirty-two years had elapsed since it was resurrected on Newell’s farm, public interest had not ceased and thousands of persons paid ad-
