158 



ANCIENT MONUMENTS. 



pottery ; carved fragments of ivory ; a large number of fossil teeth ; numerous 

 fine sculptures in stone, etc. Notice will be taken of some of the most remarkable 

 of these, under the appropriate heads. 



^i^n& 



Fio. 46. 



Another singular mound of somewhat anomalous character, of which a section 

 is herewith given, (Fig. 46,) occurred in the same enclosure with the above. It is 

 numbered 2 in Plate X, and is remarkable as being very broad and flat, measuring 

 at least eighty feet in diameter by but six or seven in height. It has two sand 

 strata ; but instead of an altar, there are two layers of discs chipped out of horn- 

 stone, (A A of the section,) some nearly round, others in the form of spear-heads. 

 They are of various sizes, but are for the most part about six inches long, by four 

 wide, and three quarters of an inch or an inch in thickness. They were placed 

 side by side, a little inclining, and one layer resting immediately on the other. 

 Out of an excavation six feet long by four wide, not far from six hundred were thrown. 

 The deposit extends beyond the limits of the excavation on every side. Supposing 

 it to be twelve feet square, (and it may be twenty or thirty,^ve have not far from 

 four thousand of these discs deposited here. If they were thus placed as an offering, 

 we can form some estimate, in view of the facts that they must have been brought 

 from a great distance, and fashioned with great toil, of the devotional fervor which 

 induced the sacrifice, or the magnitude of the calamity which that sacrifice was per- 

 haps intended to avert. The fact, that this description of stone chips most easily 

 when newly quarried, has induced the suggestion that the discs were deposited 

 here for the purpose of protecting them from the hardening influence of the 

 atmosphere, and were intended to be withdrawn and manufactured as occasion 

 warranted or necessity required. It is incredible, however, that so much care 

 should be taken to fashion the mound and introduce the mysterious sand strata, if 

 it was designed to be disturbed at any subsequent period. There is little doubt 

 that the deposit was final, and was made in compliance with some religious 

 requirement. An excavation below these layers discovered traces of fire, but too 

 slight to be worthy of more than a passing remark. 



A mound marked E in the plan of the great work, Plate XXI, No. 2, was found 

 to enclose an altar of small dimensions, which contained only a few perforated 

 wolf's teeth and some fifteen or twenty bones of the deer, all of them much 

 burned. Six or eight inches above the deposit was a stratum of large pebbles. 



It has been remarked that some of the mounds of this class contain altars which 

 have been but slightly burned, and that such are destitute of remains. A few altars 

 have been noticed, which have been much burned, but having no deposit upon 

 them, except a thin layer of phosphate of lime, which seems to have incorporated 

 itself with the clay of which they are composed, giving them the appearance of 



