outline, and exhibits no indications of defensive design. They are generally too small to answer the purpose of military works; the ditch is usually within the embankment, and they are situated on the broad and level river-bottoms, so as to be completely commanded by adjacent heights. The outline is generally a circle or a square. Occasionally they are found isolated, but more frequently in groups. Most of the circles are small, having a uniform diameter of two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet. They have a single gateway, generally opening to the east. Larger circles, enclosing in some cases fifty acres, are found, generally in combination with square or rectangular works, connected with them directly, or by avenues. The circles, whether small or large, are perfect. No engineer of modern days can lay out on the ground a more exact curve. The squares, rectangles, and polygons are also perfect in shape. Their perimeter is always regular. Some five or six enclosures, which Squier and Davis carefully surveyed, were found to be exact squares, each side measuring one thousand and eight feet. Other squares were found of larger dimensions, and some smaller. A few octagons were discovered. The squares have almost invariably gateways at the angles, and midway on each side. There are always small mounds within the enclosure, fronting each gateway. The earth from which the embankments were made was taken frequently from pits or holes outside of the enclosure; but sometimes it would seem to have been taken up evenly from the surface.

The above diagram exhibits the outline of one of a singular series of works of this class occurring in the Scioto valley-in

which the same figures (a square and two circles) are always combined, though not always occupying the same relative positions. The work here illustrated lies on Point Creek, near Frankfort, Ohio. The sides of the square are usually ten hundred and eighty feet in length. The larger of the two circles is uniformly seventeen hundred and twenty feet, and the smaller eight hundred feet in diameter. There is a communication by a gateway between the square and the larger circle, and also between the larger and the smaller circle. There are numerous other gateways in the square, and from the larger circle; but the smaller circle is entire throughout. It is also remarkable, that while the gateways of the squares are always fronted by a mound within the enclosure, nothing of the kind occurs in the openings of the circle.

In the works of this class found in other parts of Ohio, and in Indiana, the combinations vary. One group (two miles from Chillicothe) consists of four circles, three crescents, and two squares, with four mounds. Another (eight miles from Chillicothe) consists of four circles, three crescents, and two remarkable figures, consisting each of two parallel sides, seven hundred and fifty feet long, and sixty feet apart, united at each end by the arc of a circle.

A third combination (six miles from Chillicothe) consists of a rhomboidal polygon, with an avenue extending eleven hundred and thirty feet to the south-east, and also a short avenue on the north, leading to a small circle, as seen in the accompanying cut. A fourth (in Athens County, Ohio) consists of such a combination of circles, octagons, squares, crescents, and avenues, that it is impossible to give an intelligible description of them. The works themselves, or accurate drawings of them, must be examined by those who would fully comprehend their complicated relations.

The design of these regular enclosures is not satisfactorily determined. That they were not constructed for defence, is evident to every observer. As early as 1803, Bishop Madison, of Virginia, who examined the works about the Kanhawa River, summed up, in a letter published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, the evidences of their non-defensive design, as follows: 1. The ditch, when there is any, is within the enclosure. 2. There

are mounds near every enclosure, effectually commanding the entire work, and thus affording an enemy the means of demolishing the fortification. 3. The enclosures often lie at the bottom of a hill. 4. There is not a supply of water to sustain a garrison. And, lastly, they are too numerous to admit of such a design. The bishop supposes they formed lines of demarcation between the farms of the people. This is a most strange solution of the question. Mr. Squier thinks that all these regular and anomalous enclosures were of a sacred or religious character, connected in some way with the superstitious and religious rites and ceremonies of the people. It has been customary among all nations to enclose the grounds appropriated to temple and religious worship. The open temples of the ancient Britons were embraced within parapets of earth, usually circular in form. The Teocallis of Mexico, on which were practised the religious rites and ceremonies, were enclosed. The tabooed grounds and sacred places of the islands of the Pacific are enclosed. The pagoda of the Hindoo is enclosed within high and massy walls. The wooden idol of the Laplander has its sacred limit, within which the devotee only ventures on bended knee, and with face to the earth. "Procul, O, procul este, profani!" exclaimed the Cumaan Sibyl, as she approached the sacred grove. None but the royal Incas, children of the sun, were permitted to pass the walls surrounding the gorgeous temples of Peru. None but the faithful Moslem may enter the sacred precincts of the Turkish mosque. And the Christian, as he approaches the temple in which public worship is performed, instinctively feels that it is holy ground.

In addition to these works of regular outline, there are others of an anomalous character, but which are supposed to belong to the same class. One of these is a well-defined figure of a great serpent, in Adams County, Ohio, perhaps the most extraordinary earthwork thus far discovered in the West. It occupies the summit of a hill, its head resting near the point, and its body winding back for nearly one thousand feet in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail. It consists of an embankment, five feet high, and thirty feet wide at the base. The neck of the serpent is stretched out, and slightly curved, and its mouth is opened, as if in the act of swallowing an oval figure, which rests partially within its jaws. In another place (Pickaway County, Ohio) we find the figure of a cross, ninety feet between the ends, with a circular depression in the middle, twenty feet in diameter, and twenty inches deep. In another is an alligator, two hundred and fifty feet long, forty feet broad, and with legs thirty-six feet long. The forms of these two are shown in the cut at the top of the next page.

There remains to be noticed the most interesting variety of these ancient monuments, the MOUNDS. They are generally found in connexion, more or less intimate, with the enclosures already described, and are surprisingly numerous,-there being at least five hundred in a single county in Ohio; and Mr. Squier estimates the whole number in that State at ten thousand. They are of all sizes, some very small, and others of great dimensions. Near Miamisburg, Ohio, is one sixtyeight feet high, and eight hundred and fifty-two feet in circumference. At the mouth of Grave Creek, in Virginia, is one seventy feet high, and one thousand feet in circumference. At Cahokia, Illinois, is one ninety feet high, and two thousand feet in circumference; and another, in the State of Mississippi, is estimated to cover six acres of ground. Their form is generally conical, but some are pyramidal. The pyra

mids are always truncated, so as to form a level space on the summit, and generally they have graded ascents, reminding us of the Teocallis of Mexico. One of the most beautiful and regularly formed of these remains is a circular work in Greenup County, Ky., consisting of an embankment of earth five feet high by thirty feet base, enclosing an area over a hundred feet in diameter, in the centre of

which rises a mound eight feet high by forty feet base. The earth to construct them was generally taken from pits, or "dug holes," which are still visible. Some of these pits are so symmetrical that they have been, by cursory observers, supposed to be wells. It is possible some of them might have answered, as a secondary design, for reservoirs. It would, however, appear in some cases, that the earth and stones, which occasionally are found in mounds, are foreign to the locality, and must have been brought from a considerable distance. Some mounds are composed entirely of clay, while the earth about them is loam or gravel. Generally, however, they are composed of earth obtained near by.

In Ohio and Indiana the mounds are most numerous within the enclosures, or near them. Sometimes they are arranged in groups, and again they are isolated, or exhibit no relation of position to each other. Frequently they are found on the tops of hills, and on the jutting points of the table-lands near the enclosures, and sometimes the huntsman encounters them in the depths of the forest, far away from the valleys, in secluded places, overlooking some waterfall, or commanding the view of some narrow valley. They are yet in a wonderful state of preservation, considering their probable age, for they must be many hundred years old, perhaps "older than the Pyramids." While the more imposing structures of civilized man have crumbled into shapeless ruins, the humble mound of the child of the forest yet remains little changed from its original proportions. Covered with the forest, its surface interlaced with the roots of trees and bushes, or protected by turf, it bids defiance to the storms of centuries.

It is the popular opinion, that all the mounds are places of sepulFOURTH SERIES, VOL. II.-16