186 Ancient Worh'in the Ohio Valley. 



there is an absence of all pyramidal structures, but at the entrance of 

 each gateway there is a low circular mound. From the central gate- 

 way, in the southeast wall, there is an embankment extending nearly 

 to the entrance of the circle which incloses the great mound, and to 

 the south and east, at an early day, similar embankments could be 

 traced, crowning the brow of the terrace, which is here delta-shaped. 



The great mound near Miamisburg, Ohio, sixty eight feet high, and 

 eight hundred and fifty feet in circumference, far surpasses in dimen- 

 sions that which the Greeks erected over the body of Patroclus. 



" They still abiding, heaped the pile, 

 An hundred feet of breadth from side to side 

 They gave to it, and on the summit placed 

 With sorrowing hearts the body of the dead." 



Grottoes occupied by Mound-builders. 



The conglomerate at the base of the Coal Measures, and other for- 

 mations in the Ohio Valley, often crop out in bold ledges, and in many 

 places have weathered into deep recesses with overhanging roofs, thus 

 forming grottoes, which were undoubtedly used by the Mound-builders 

 for shelter, and also for sepulchres, but it is difficult, in most instances, 

 to discriminate between their vestiges and those of the modern Red 

 JNIan. 



About two miles west of Rome, Perry County, Indiana, in the Ohio 

 Valley, according to MS. notes placed in my possession by Prof. E. T. 

 Cox, in one of the rock houses, formed by a projecting ledge of sub- 

 carboniferous sandstone, fifty feet in thickness, without a visible seam 

 (interposed between the two horizons of Archimedes limestone), occur 

 two ancient graves, the dimensions of which are about 4i^X2^ feet, 

 oval in shape, and planted witlj flat stones, sloping inward, which form 

 a perfect casing throughout. One had been dug into, exposing frag- 

 ments of a human skeleton, but the other remains intact. The bottom 

 of the rock house is made of fragments of stone which have fallen 

 from the overhanguig roof, intermixed with cla}'. This deposit has 

 not been penetrated in the search of human relics. Without the line 

 of the eaves' drippings is a mass of sandstone, 3X8 feet, tumbled 

 from above, in which, and running with the rift, are two mortar-like 

 excavations, about two feet apart, ovoidal in shape, 6X8 inches, and 

 tapering down to the depth of twenty inches. Two excavations of a 

 similar character were observed by Prof. Cox, near Leopold, and he 

 was informed that others exist near Rome. Their position, far above 

 the neighboring streams, and their direction in reference to the bed- 

 rock of the region, convinced him that they were not "pot-holes" 



