THE ANCIENT MOUNDS.
The morning of the third day found us passing Sisterville, in Virginia.
Soon afterward we passed New-Martinsville. We saw several mounds. One
was very small. Another was large, but somewhat disfigured by having
been excavated.
We were now approaching a village on the Virginia side called
Elizabethtown, near which a small stream joins the Ohio, known by the
name of Big Grave Creek. In this village of Elizabethtown is one of the
largest, most perfect, and most beautiful mounds to be found in the
whole Ohio country.
We were told of this curiosity before we reached the place; so that we
were not taken by surprise. Besides, the boat stopped a few moments at
the wharf, in full sight of it, not a quarter of a mile distant.
This mound is about one hundred and eighty feet in diameter at its
base, and some seventy or seventy-five feet high. On its top is an old
tower or observatory, around which are several trees, some of them of
considerable age. One, a venerable oak, is four feet in diameter.
The center of its top is a kind of crater or basin, four feet deep and
eight or ten across it. Elsewhere the top of the mound is perfectly
flat.
One puzzler to the traveler is, where the earth was obtained for
building such a huge pile; for it is situated almost in the middle of a
large plain, on and near which is no appearance of any former excavation
for this purpose. There are, however, several smaller mounds a little
east of it.
The country near the Ohio abounds with these mounds. What they were, and
by whom they were formed, is quite uncertain. The general opinion that
they are the graves of some ancient people is sustained by the fact that
they contain human bones, sometimes in considerable numbers.
A gentleman on board the boat, a man of intelligence, informed me, that
he had seen, in Eastern Tennessee or Western North Carolina, a species
of mounds of a very different description. They were composed
essentially of small stones, between which were layers of bones. And
what made the case very remarkable indeed, there are no stones, of the
kind found in these mounds within many miles of them, and there is no
appearance of there ever having been any.