18 A K C 1 E N T M N U M E N T S . 



narrow passages between its ends and the steeps on either hand. Next comes the 

 principal wall of the enclosure. In event of sin attack, even though both these 

 defences were carried, there still remains a series of walls so complicated as 

 inevitably to distract and bewilder the assailants, thus giving a marked advantage to 

 the delenders. This advantage may have been nmch greater than we, in our igno- 

 rance of the military system of this ancient people, can understand. But, from the 

 manifest judgment with which their defensive positions were chosen, a^ well as 

 from the character of their entrenchments, so far as we comprehend them, it is 

 safe to conclude that all parts of this work were the best calculated to secure the 

 objects proposed by the builders, under the modes of attack and defence then 

 practised. 



The coincidences between the guarded entrances of this and similar works 

 throughout the West, and those of the Mexican defences, is singularly striking. 

 The wall on the eastern sidg of the Tlascalan territories, mentioned by Cortez and 

 IJernal Diaz, was six miles long, having a single entrance thirty feet wide, which 

 was formed in the manner represented in the supplementary plan A. The ends of 

 the wall overlapped each other, in the form of semicircles, having a common 

 centre.* 



s 



PLATE VII. 



"fort ancient," warren COUNTV, OHIO.t 



One of the most extensive, if not the most extensive, work of this class, in the 

 entire West, occurs on the banks of the Little Miami river, about thirty-five 

 miles north-east from Cincinnati, in Warren county, Ohio. It has not far from 

 four miles of embankment, for the most part veiy heavy, rising, at the more accessi- 

 ble i)oints, to the height of eighteen and twenty feet. The accompanying map is 

 from a faithful survey, made by Prof. Locke, of Cincinnati, and published by him 

 amongst the papers of the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists, in 



* De Soils describes this Tlascalan work as " a great wall which ran from one mountain to the other, 

 catirily stopping up the way : a sumptuous and strong piece of building which showed the power and 

 greatness of the owner. The outside was of hewn stone cemented witli mortar of extraordinaiy strength, 

 U was twenty feet thick and a fathom and u half high ; and on the top was a parapet after the manner 

 of our. fortifications. The entrance was narrow and winding ; the wall in that part dividing and making 

 two walls, which circularly crossed each other for the space of ten paces." — History of the Conquest oj 

 Mexico, p. 139. 



t An account of tliis work, accompanied by a very good plan, appeared in the " I'ortfoliu," (a 

 periodical published in Philadelpliia,) for the year 1809. Both plan and description were copied by 

 Mr. Atwater, in his memoir, in the first volume of the " Archceologia Americana." It was also briefly 

 described by Dr. Drake, in the chapter on Antifiuities contained in his " View of Cincinnati." Since 

 that period, it ha.> biiii tlu- objrrf nf fn inunt vi.-lt and rcmaik 



