Besides those ruins in the Illinois and Wabash countries, which have often been mentioned, there are others no less remarkable, many hundreds of miles farther west, particularly in the country about the great falls of the Mississippi. As we approach these falls commonly called St. Anthony’s we frequently meet with pyramids of earth, from thirty to seventy, and even eighty feet in height. These are most probably the tombs of the ancient kings and chieftains of this part of America, though there are others which I am inclined to believe were erected in consequence of some signal victory, and possibly to cover the bones and carcasses of the slain.
In digging horizontally into several of these pyramids, a little above the base, we generally found a stratum of white substance, somewhat like moist lime, and glutinous withal, extended in all probability several yards within, or perhaps nearly the whole length of the diametrical line. I had even reason to believe this consolidated chalky substance to be the remains of skeletons buried, perhaps two hundred centuries ago, and converted by time and the operations of the elements into their present state.
Many tokens remain, on both sides of the Missisippi, of the land being in ancient ages as well cultivated and as thickly inhabited as the country on the Danube or the Rhine; which fully proves that the literati have been too hasty in denominating America a new world, or an original present to the European from the hands of rude nature.
A copper mine was opened some years since further down the Mississippi, and to the great surprise of the labourers, a large collection of the mining tools were found several fathoms below the superfices of the earth. Another person, in digging for a well discovered a furnace of brick work five fathoms below the present surface; and in this furnace were found a quantity of coals and firebrands, which for ought we know, might have been kindled in the days of Moses or Lycurgus.
Not long since, at a spot on the Ohio, where the bank had been washed by the undermining of the water, a stone dropped out of the hardest kind of black marble, about seven pounds in weight, having twelve equal surfaces, each surface being mathematically equilateral and equiangular five sided figures; this does not appear to be a lusus natura, but a work of exquisite art, the offspring of human ingenuity.
Near the falls of the Missisippi, there is a salt spring in the bed of the river, which has been enclosed with stone work of unknown antiquity, to keep out the fresh water. In times of freshes, however, the river overflows the stone work and mixes with the brine, so that it does not afford salt to the savages hereabouts until the river is considerably fallen.
In several places, circular fortifications have been discovered in the same country: these are constantly inclosed with deep ditches and fenced with a breast work. From these, and other similar remains of antiquity, one would be inclined to think the world much older than has been commonly imagined.
Several tribes on the western side of the great river above mentioned, date their existence for more than twenty thousand moons back, and the Indians of the western world go infinitely farther into the depths of time, though both relate many events of these distant periods that are evidently mixed with fable.
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