found in
Ohio. Of these the still existing "elevated squares" at Marietta are
good examples.

Illustration of Elevated Square, Marietta.-----------

This cut represents the mound preserved in the park at Marietta. It is
ten feet high, one hundred and eighty-eight feet long, by one hundred
and thirty-two feet wide. The platform on the top has an area of about
half an acre. Graded ways lead up on each of the four sides. These
grades are twenty-five feet wide, and sixty feet long.<30>

As we approach the Gulf States, these platform mounds increase in
number. The best representative of this class, the most stupendous
example of mound builders' work in this country, is situated in
Illinois, not far from St. Louis. The mound and its surroundings are so
interesting that they deserve special mention. One of the most fertile
sections of Illinois is that extending along the Mississippi from the
Kaskaskia to the Cahokia river, about eighty miles in length, and five
in breadth. Well watered, and not often overflowed by the Mississippi,
it is such a fertile and valuable tract that it has received the name
of the "Great American Bottom." It is well known that the Mound Builders
chose the most fertile spots for their settlements, and it is therefore
not surprising to find the evidence that this was a thickly settled
portion of their territory. Mr. Breckenridge, writing in 1811, says:
"The great number of mounds, and the astonishing quantity of human
bones, everywhere dug up or found on the surface of the ground, with a
thousand other appearances, announces that this valley was at one time
filled with habitations and villages. The whole face of the bluff, or
hill, which bounds it on the east, appears to have been a continuous
burying ground."<31>

Mounds are numerous in this section. We learn that there are two groups
of mounds or pyramids, one about ten miles above the Cahokia, and the
other about the same distance below it, more than one hundred and fifty
in all. Speaking of the group above the Cahokia, Mr. Breckenridge says:
"I found myself in the midst of a group of mounds mostly of a circular
shape, and, at a distance, resembling enormous hay-stacks scattered
through a meadow. One of the largest which I ascended was about two
hundred paces in circumference at the bottom, the form nearly square,
though it had evidently undergone considerable alteration from the
washing of rains. The top was level, with an area sufficient to