scientific gentlemen, who have been permitted to make thorough
examination, to be agreed in this decision.

The next question is, How did it come to be where it was discovered?
There is very little probability that it was carved on the spot
where it was recently exhumed; the stone for that purpose was not
likely to have been found there or to have been taken there; and
the situation where it was discovered, a morass or water-bed,
favors the theory that it was deposited there. Setting aside the
belief, honestly entertained by many people in the immediate vicinity,
that the statue was surreptitiously placed in the slough where it
was dug up a few days since, there is tenable ground for the theory
that it was taken there by some of the early white visitors to
this section of country. This might have been done by transportation
over the water-courses communicating with the locality, either
through the River St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario, the Oswego River,
Onondaga Lake and Onondaga Creek, or through the Hudson and Mohawk
Rivers, Oneida Lake and River, Onondaga Lake and Onondaga Creek.
These waters were early navigated, and within the memory of persons
still living the principal means of transportation was by batteaux,
which with considerable loads were propelled along these water-courses.
The Onondaga Creek was in those days navigable for light-draft craft
capable of conveying a much greater weight than this statue, at
least as far up its waters as the place of this discovery.

The place of the discovery is not in the original channel of the
creek, but in a detour from that channel. It is not unreasonable
to suppose that for some reason--from alarm, or from a desire to
secret the object,--the craft was run out of the main channel into
this then open water-way, where the statue was deposited.