SACREDENCLOSURES. 89 



The earth is thrown outward on either hand, forming embankments varying upon the 

 outer sides from five to eleven feet in height ; yet it appears that much more earth 

 has been excavated than enters into these walls. At the lower extremity of the grade, 

 the walls upon the interior sides measure no less than tweati/-hoo feet in perpen- 

 dicular height. The easy ascent here afforded has been rendered available in the 

 construction of the Chillicothe and Portsmouth turnpike, which passes through it. 

 The walls are covered with trees and bushes, and resemble parallel natural hills, 

 and probably would be regarded as such by the superficial observer. Indeed, 

 hundreds pass along without suspecting that they are in the midst of one of the 

 most interesting monuments which the country affords, and one which bears a 

 marked resemblance to some of those works which are described to us in connec- 

 tion with the causeways and aqueducts of Mexico. 



From the end of the right-hand wall, upon the third terrace, extends a low line 

 of embankment, (now much obliterated by the construction of the turnpike,) two 

 thousand five hundred and eighty feet long, leading towards a group of mounds, as 

 shown in the plan. At tUe distance of fifteen hundred feet from the grade, a wall 

 starts off at right angles, for the distance of two hundred and twelve feet, when it 

 assumes a course parallel to the principal line for four hundred and twenty feet, 

 and then curves inwardly, terminating near a group consisting of one large and 

 three small mounds. A ground plan of the latter is elsewhere given. This group 

 of mounds is now enclosed, and constitutes the cemetery of the neighborhood. 

 Forty rods to the right of this group, is a large mound thirty feet in height. 

 Several small mounds occur upon the adjacent plain, though no enclosures of 

 magnitude are found nearer than five miles lower down, on the river. 



The left-hand wall of the grade as we descend seems continued down upon the 

 second terrace for some distance, terminating near a low spot of ground, usually 

 containing water. Similar depressions are observed in the ancient beds of streams. 

 It has been suggested that the Scioto river once flowed along the base of the 

 terrace at this point, and that the way led down to it. Without expressing an 

 opinion upon the probability of this conjecture, it is sufficient to observe that the 

 river now flows more than half a mile to the left, and that two terraces, each twenty 

 feet in height, intervene between the present and the supposed ancient level of the 

 stream. To assent to the suffsrestion, would be to admit an almost immeasurable 

 antiquity to the structure under consideration. 



It is, of course, useless to speculate upon the probable purpose of this work. 

 At first glance, it seems obvious ; namely, that it was constructed simply to facili- 

 tate the ascent from one terrace to another. But the long line of embankment 

 extendino- from it, and the manifest connection which exists between it and the 

 mounds upon the plain, unsettle this conclusion. After all, we are obliged to leave 

 this interesting work with the single remark, already several times made in respect 

 to others equally interesting and inexplicable, that future investigations, carefully 

 conducted, may solve alike the problem of their purposes and of their origin.* 



* The reader is requested to compare the plan of tliis work given by Mr. Atwater in the Archseologia 

 Americana, witli the one here presented. 



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