REMAINS AT THE SOUTH. 21 



January, 176G, discovered the remarkable works at Mt. Royal near Lake George. 

 Eight years later William visited the same scene, and found it much changed by 

 the whites who had begun to occupy and cultivate the land. He describes Mt. 

 Royal as a magnificent Indian mound, from which a noble Indian highway fifty 

 yards wide, sunk a little below the common level, and with a slight embankment 

 on each side, led in a straight line three-quarters of a mile to an artificial lake. 



William Bartram commenced his journey in the spring of 1773, and passed 

 through the Carolinas, Georgia, East and West Florida, and. as far west as the 

 Mississippi river. He gives an account of "many very magnificent monuments of 

 the power and industry of the ancient inhabitants" visible near Wrightsborough, 

 Columbia Co. Georgia, "the work of a powerful nation whose period of grandeur 

 perhaps long preceded the discovery of this continent." 



A fortification on the Altemaha, opposite the town of Darien, he mentions as 

 supposed to be of Spanish origin ; and he takes note of mounds, terraces, embank- 

 ments, &c, at the junction of the Ocmulgee and the Oconee rivers ; at Charlotia on 

 the river St. Johns; at the junction of the Broad and Savannah rivers in Georgia; 

 at fort Prince George, Pickens Co., South Carolina ; and at Taensa and Apalachicola. 

 At the close of his narrative he remarks : " To conclude this subject concerning 

 the monuments of the Americans, I deem it necessary to observe as my opinion, 

 that none of them that I have seen discover the least signs of the arts, sciences, or 

 architecture of the Europeans, or other inhabitants of the old world ; yet they 

 evidently betray every sign and mark of the most distant antiquity." 1 



It is singular that Captain Bernard Romans, who in 1771-2 travelled through 

 the same regions, and, in 177G, published "A Concise Natural History of East and 

 West Florida," should have paid no attention to the remains of ancient labor that 

 he must have seen. He mentions, in one instance, a large tumulus as the only 

 remarkable thing in a certain place, but it did not seem to excite his curiosity. 

 His decided views respecting the aborigines may have influenced his mind in this 

 regard; as he expresses his belief that "from one end of America to the other, the 

 red people are the same nation, and draw their origin from a different source than 

 either Europeans, Chinese, negroes, Moors, or any other different species of the 

 human genus." Again he says : "I am firmly of opinion that God created an 

 original man and woman in this part of the globe, of a different species from any in 

 the other parts," p. 38. He speaks of having noticed some stones deeply marked 

 with lines straight and crossed, which "do not ill resemble inscriptions;" but con- 

 jectures that they are made by the savages in grinding their awls, p. 327. 



In 1772-3, the Rev. David Jones, of Freehold, N. J., spent some time among the 

 Indians west of the Ohio, and in his journal notices the " Old Fortifications" near 

 Chilicothe and on the Scioto. 



1 In a MS. work on the Creek Indians, left by Bartram, that came into the possession of Dr. Morton, 

 he describes " public squares," alluded to by Adair, which were used by the Indians for religious ceremo- 

 nies and deliberative councils, and states that ancient inclosures and other remains, concerning the 

 origin of which they professed no knowledge, were also sometimes appropriated to such purposes. — 

 Smithsonian Contributions, II, page 135 of Mr. Squier's Memoir. 



