the banks of the Black River, near the Ox Bow, are the remains of an
elevated road, about three feet high and seven feet wide, extending for
miles, intersected near the river by the great Indian war path. The
settlers call it the Railroad, and it has all the appearance of a work
of this nature, and is strongly and carefully built--a fine remain of
the old mound builders' time.

Long lines of mounds, extending for scores and probably hundreds of
miles, nearly all of the same shape, varying in their distance from each
other from one to four miles.

Circular mounds of a base of two hundred feet, and a height of twenty
feet.

Others, two hundred yards long, from ten to twenty feet wide, and from
two to three feet high--these last, also, having an open space through
them, as if intended for an entrance gate.

Others, in the form of rabbits, badgers, bears, and birds; others, of
unknown monstrous animals.

We examined in all thirty-nine mounds; and in one, at the very base, on
the floor of the natural earth upon which the mound was built (the soil
of the mound being, as I said, always of a different character to the
surrounding soil) we discovered and carried away with us the perfect
skeleton of a man, with a few arrow heads made of flint, and a tobacco
pipe, made also of stone, with a very small and narrow bowl, having a
device on it like some of the hieroglyphic monsters of Egypt or old
India.

In twelve we found skeletons, male and female, of the present race of
Indians, with their bows and arrows, or, as was the case in four
instances, their rifles and knives and tobacco pipes; some of these last
elaborately carved in red stone. In Iowa we dug into a large mound, and
discovered fragments of an ancient pottery, with the colors burned into
the material, and various bones and skulls, arrow heads, and a flint
knife, and saw.

We saw the painted rocks, also, on the Mississippi shores, near Prairie
du Chien--said to be of an immemorial age--and the questions, Who was
this old mound builder--whence did he come--when did he vanish from this
continent? have haunted me ever since. That he was the primitive man of
this planet, I think there is good reason to believe. Go where we will,
to what portion soever of the earth, we shall find these mound evidences
of his existence. In Asia, Europe, Africa, and all along the backbone of
the American continent, he has established his record. Yet no one knows
anything about him: all