IgQ A N C I E N T M O N U M E N T S . 



the investigation. It is very certain that another, perhaps several otlier chambers 

 are concealed by this mound. 



The surface of this mound was covered with the layer of pebbles and coarse 

 travel already mentioned as characterizing the mounds of tbe first class ; but the 

 sand strata were absent. Around the base had been laid, with some degree of 

 reo'ularity, a large quantity of flat stones, constituting a sort of wall for the better 

 support of the earth. These stones must have been brought from the hills, which 

 are here nearly half a mile distant. Why the altar as well as the skeleton had 

 been enclosed, and why the floor of the mound had been so carefully levelled, cast 

 over with clay, and then hardened by fire, are questions which will probably 

 remain unanswered and unexplained unless future investigations serve further to 

 elucidate the mystery of the mounds. At any rate, this singular mound can prove 

 no o-reater puzzle to the reader than it has to the authors of these inquiries. 



A detached mound stands on the bank of Walnut creek, about three miles below 

 the one just described, which is entirely anomalous in its character. It is about 

 nine feet in height by forty base. The following section will best explain its 

 construction. 



■ ItlS'''^ Fig. 69. The principal portion of the 



mound, which is darkly shaded in the 

 section, resembles long exposed and 

 highly compacted ashes, and is inter- 

 mingled with specks of charcoal, small bits of burned bones, and fragments of 

 sandstone much burned. Beneath this, and forming the nucleus as it were of the 

 entire mound, is a mass of very pure white clay, of somewhat regular outline ; but 

 whether this regularity was accidental or designed, it is not undertaken to say. 

 The clay rested upon the original soil, and did not appear to have been subjected 

 in any degree to the action of fire. The carbonaceous deposit, if we may so regard 

 it, seems from this circumstance to have been brought here and not to have been 

 produced by burning on the spot. The mound could not possibly have been 

 designed for a look-out, inasmuch as it stands immediately at the base of the table 

 lands, and commands but a very limited view. 



Two other mounds, numbered 6 and 7 in the map, Plate II, exhibited some 

 features in common with the one last mentioned, though neither had the clay 

 deposit at the base. After penetrating a foot or twenty inches into these, traces 

 of ashes and other carbonaceous matter, with here and there small quantities of 

 burned bones in fine fragments, became abundant, — indeed the remainder of the 

 mound seemed entirely constituted of such materials. In some instances, if not in 

 all, the fragments of calcined bones were of the human skeleton. It has been 

 suggested that these mounds were composed of the ashes of the dead, burned 

 elsewhere, but finally thus heaped together. It is not impossible that such was 

 the case in a few instances, though mounds possessing these features are too few 

 in number and too small in size to justify the conclusion that such was the general 

 custom. 



A number of mounds, principally within enclosures, have been examined, which 

 exhibited only a level, hard-packed area at their base, thinly covered with a fine- 



