The Earthivorks at Fort Ancient. 281 



to carry iiway the spongy mould arising from decaying vegetable and 

 animal matter. 



No doubt many exceedingly interesting and important discoveries 

 v*ill be made in the future, tending to throw light on the objects and 

 purposes of this wonderful construction. All that we can at present 

 assume as an absolute certainty is, that it is the work of intelligent 

 man. Investigation, thus far, has not gone beyond the surface of the 

 ground, and the presence of wells and cisterns, or of pavements, can 

 only be ascertained by excavation. 



Any one examining these works must come to the conclusion that 

 they were erected for defense, and that by a race of men who under- 

 stood something of the art of war ; indeed, much more than can be 

 reasonably attributed to the roving propensities and unstable habits of 

 the American Indian aborigines found upon the continent by the first 

 discoverers of this country. The extent, too, of these Avorks, viewed 

 in the light of military fortifications, proves beyond peradventure that 

 they were raised not for the protection of a tribe more or less numer- 

 ous, but of a powerful people, raised to war and used to war's alarms ; 

 for within these formidable lines there might be congregated, at a 

 moment's notice, fifty or sixty thousand men, with all their materials 

 of war, women, children, and household goods. The Roman legion, 

 w'e are told, required only a square of seven hundred yards to efiect 

 the strongest encampment known to the ancients of Europe and Asia, 

 so that, upon a similar basis, the investment of these fortifications 

 must have been the work of a very formidable body of men indeed, 

 and such as we read of only in the great wars of the Roman emper- 

 ors with the barbarous hordes that swept from the North, or the 

 masses that were hurled upon each other in the days of the first cru- 

 sades. The supposition that the works were of a military character, 

 seems to me not only to be the most probable, but the only one, in the 

 absence of any clue, history or. tradition, in the minds of the aborigines, 

 that can be reached. 



The openings, visible at intervals of one hundred and two hundred 

 feet, and which pass through the embankment, may have been pro- 

 tected with gates, or movable timbers, for the purpose of closing them 

 at night, or in times of apprehended danger. We can readily conceive 

 how these embankments might have been thrown up around the city 

 or town in which the chief administrative officer of the nation resided, 

 to guard against sudden attacks and surprises on the part of the neigh- 

 boring peoples. But whatever conclusion may be arrived at, upon the 

 mere surface evidence, must be undoubtedly greatly modified by 

 further research, and it is to me a matter of surprise that so singular 



