386 ARCHEOLOGY. 



fixed in their handles. It is not to be wondered at that the first 

 dredgings, which were thirty-two times larger, should have brought 

 to light some objects of which we have not had the fortune to recover 

 counterparts. I may mention, among others, the teeth fixed to stag's 

 horn, of which M. Rossine, the engineer, got a specimen for the Can- 

 tonal Museum on the first day of the working of the steam-dredge, 

 which Avas before the fabrication of the counterfeits. 



Without laying too great stress upon the foregoing figures, they 

 suffice to give a notion of the riches of this site, of its importance, 

 and of the duration of its occupation, as well as of the variety of 

 the types which it may still contain, for all the dredgings have not 

 nearly exhausted the vast bed of the deposits of the antique hamlet of 

 Concise. 



ANCIENT MOUNDS AT ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, IN 1819. 



By T . R. PEALE, 

 CHIEF EXAMINER IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE. 



The contents of an old portfolio will sometimes restore a lost fact 

 which may be useful when connected with the observations of the 

 day. So I hope it may be with the accompanying map of a series 

 of mounds as they existed about forty years since, in the vicinity of 

 the city of St. Louis; these mounds, like all other vestiges of the 

 aborigines of our country, must soon pass away. The map may fix 

 a remembrance of one period of their existence, and it is for this 

 purpose that it is offered to the Institution without further apology. 



An exploring expedition, destined for the upper waters of the 

 Missouri river and the Rocky mountains, was fitted out at Pittsburg, 

 Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1819. It Avas placed in charge of 

 Major (now Colonel) S. H. Long, of the United States topographical 

 engineers, and was accompanied by a scientific corps, of which the 

 writer of this article was the junior member. 



For the use of the expedition a small steamboat was constructed on 

 a plan supposed to be well adapted to the purpose, and named 

 "Western Engineer." It was furnished with two propelling wheels 

 placed in the stern, one of which bore in large letters the name of 

 James Monroe, and the other that of John C. Calhoun. The Presi- 

 dent of the United States and the Secretary of War were thus 

 represented as the propelling power of the expedition. 



This little steamer, the first which ascended the Missouri, and per- 

 haps the only one known to history as bearing three names, produced 

 a great impression on the sons of the forest as they beheld it strug- 

 gling against wind and currents, belching forth flame and smoke from 



