us.

I had no sooner made all the dispositions necessary to the good
husbanding of the farm, than I hired a half breed, well known in those
parts, and subsequently a Winnebago Indian, to whose wigwam the half
breed introduced me at my request. And with these two, the one a
veritable savage, and the other very nearly related to him, I set off
with a wagon, a yoke of oxen, a large tent, and abundance of provisions,
on a journey of mound discoveries.

I have only space here to say that we traversed the whole of the north
and west of the State of Wisconsin, and through the chief parts of
Minnesota and Iowa; and that subsequently, about, eighteen months
afterward, we visited the region of the Four Lakes, of which Madison is
the centre, where there are hundreds of mounds, arranged in nearly every
form and of nearly every animal device, which we had found in our
previous travels.

I made drawings of all the remarkable groups which I met with; and,
without going into particulars, I may give you some idea of their
likelihood in the following summary: Mounds arranged in circles of three
circles, with a large earthwork in the inner one; the outer circle
containing sixty mounds, the second thirty, the first fifteen. I
examined the earthwork, and found in it, about four feet below the
surface, remains of charcoal and charred bones, burnt earth, and
considerable quantities of mica. It had evidently been an altar or
sacrificial mound--and I afterward, upon examination, found many
such--but they were always enclosed by other mounds; and these (the
outer mounds) contained nothing but earth, although there was this
remarkable peculiarity about them, that the earth of which they were
composed was altogether of a different nature from the surrounding
earth, and must have been brought to that spot, as the old Druids
brought the enormous blocks of stone which composed their temples and
altars at Stonehenge, from an unknown distance.

Other mounds were arranged in squares, triangles, and parallelograms.
Others, in a series of successive squares, about three feet apart,
having an opening to the east and west, and terminating in a square of
about fourteen feet in the centre, where a truncated mound is sure to be
erected.

Others, formed a good deal like a Minie rifle ball, but with a more
pointed apex, running on both sides of the earth effigy of a monstrous
bear for upward of forty rods.

Others, shaped like an eagle with outstretched