Now it should be observed that the Book of Mormon has nothing to say about the occupation of America by man before the arrival of the Jaredites. If scientists find, beyond controversy, that there were human beings here before the building of the tower in fact, before the flood and way back in glacial ages, the authors of that volume offer no objection at all. They do not touch that question. They only assert that the Lord led the brother of Jared and his colony to this country shortly after the dispersion, and they give the briefest possible outline of the political and ecclesiastical history of their descendants until their final overthrow. This has never been, and cannot be, disputed on scientific grounds. . . Are there in this country any Indian, that are not descendants of these first Hebrew settlers? That is a question for the scientists to answer. The Book of Mormon gives no direct information on that subject. It confines itself strictly to the history of the descendants of Lehi and Mulek. If science, after a careful investigation, of the physical characteristics of the present-day Indians; their languages, their religious ideas, their myths and traditions, and their social institutions, should declare that there are evidences of other influences as well as Semitic, that would not affect the authenticity of the Book of Mormon in the least, for the proofs of the truth of its historical records, fragmentary though they may be, are decisive to every unprejudiced mind, and they are accumulating rapidly.