ared. The
great mound at Miamisburg, Ohio, is 68 feet high; and that at Grave
Creek, West Virginia, is 75 feet high. Both had level summits, and
stairways on the outside, but no trace of any structure remains on them.
All these mounds were constructed for religious uses, and they are, in
their way, as much alike as any five Gothic churches.

Could these works of the Mound-Builders be restored to the condition in
which they were when the country was filled with their busy communities,
we should doubtless see great edifices, similar in style to those in
Yucatan, standing on the upper terraces of all the low and extended
"mounds," and smaller structures on the high mounds, such as those above
named. There would seem to be an extension of ancient Mexico and Central
America through Texas into the Mississippi and Ohio valleys; and so, if
there were no massive stone-work in the old ruins of those countries, it
might seem that the Mound-Builders' works were anciently extended into
them by way of Texas.

The fact that the settlements and works of the Mound-Builders extended
through Texas and across the Rio Grande indicates very plainly their
connection with the people of Mexico, and goes far to explain their
origin. We have other evidence of intercourse between the two peoples;
for the obsidian dug from the mounds, and perhaps the porphyry also, can
be explained only by supposing commercial relations between them.

We can not suppose the Mound-Builders to have come from any other part
of North America, for nowhere else north of the Isthmus was there any
other people capable of producing such works as they left in the places
where they dwelt. Beyond the relics of the Mound-Builders themselves, no
traces of the former existence of such a people have been discovered in
any part of North America save Mexico, and Central America, and
districts immediately connected with them. At the same time, it is not
unreasonable to suppose the civilized people of these regions extended
their settlements through Texas, and also migrated across the Gulf into
the Mississippi Valley. In fact, the connection of settlements by way of
Texas appears to have been unbroken from Ohio to Mexico.

This colonizing extension of the old Mexican race must have taken place
at a remote period in the past; for what has been said of the antiquity
of the Mound-Builders shows that a very long period, far more than two
thousand years, it may be, must have elapsed sin