f a cone,
composed of small stones on which no marks of tools were visible. In
them some of the most interesting articles are found, such as urns,
ornaments of copper, heads of spears, &c., of the same metal, as
well as medals of copper and pickaxes of horneblende; * * * works of
this class, compared with those of earth, are few, and they are none
of them as large as the mounds at Grave Creek, in the town of
Circleville, which belong to the first class. I saw one of these
stone tumuli which had been piled on the surface of the earth on the
spot where three skeletons had been buried in stone coffins, beneath
the surface. It was situated on the western edge of the hill on
which the "walled town" stood, on Paint Creek. The graves appear to
have been dug to about the depth of ours in the present times. After
the bottom and sides were lined with thin flat stones, the corpses
were placed in these graves in an eastern and western direction, and
large flat stones were laid over the graves; then the earth which
had been dug out of the graves was thrown over them. A huge pile of
stones was placed over the whole. It is quite probable, however,
that this was a work of our present race of Indians. Such graves are
more common in Kentucky than Ohio. No article, except the skeletons,
was found in these graves; and the skeletons resembled very much the
present race of Indians.

The mounds of Sterling County, Illinois, are described by W. C.
Holbrook[20] as follows:

I recently made an examination of a few of the many Indian mounds
found on Rock River, about two miles above Sterling, Ill. The first
one opened was an oval mound about 20 feet long, 12 feet wide, and
7 feet high. In the interior of this I found a _dolmen_ or
quadrilateral wall about 10 feet long, 4 feet high, and 4-1/2 feet
wide. It had been built of lime-rock from a quarry near by, and was
covered with large flat stones. No mortar or cement had been used.
The whole structure rested on the surface of the natural soil, the
interior of which had been scooped out to enlarge the chamber.
Inside of the _dolmen_ I found the partly decayed remains of eight
human skeletons, two very large teeth of an unknown animal, two
fossils, one of which is not found in this place, and a plummet. One
of the long bones had been splintered; the fragments had united, but
there remained large morbid growths of bone (exostosis)