MOUND EXPLORATION NEAR JOSl.VN. 1 99 



leveling it down. He came with tools to our assistance, hospitably 

 entertained us at noon-time, and after dinner secured us, at small ex- 

 pense, the additional help of a neighbor, so that by 4 o'clock p. m. we 

 had finished our task and were ready to turn our faces homeward — not 

 the less ready that a cold, drizzling rain, which set in shortly after w^e 

 began operations, had continued throughout the day. 



We trenched the mound from east to west across its center, making 

 an opening sixteen feet long at the top, four feet wide, and eight and a 

 half feet deep in the middle, and moving some fifteen or twenty yards 

 of earth. For some distance down we found the earth soft like that of 

 the mound at Pine Creek, and scattered through it, especially west of 

 the center, were a few bits of a black substance w-hich looked hke 

 charcoal, but were entirely structureless and soft. 



We found not one particle of bone, or even of stone, save a very few 

 small calcareous nodules interspersed from bottom to top. The clay 

 was in some places of a rather more reddish-brown tlian in others, and 

 streaked with seams of a very white substance, like that supposed to 

 be ash in the mound at Pine Creek. At the depth of three and a half 

 feet this seamed structure ended, the side of our trench showing very 

 definitely in section its lower limit. Below it was a homogeneous, 

 light brown earth, soon giving i^lace to a gray stratum, almost like "blue 

 clay," quite hard, and growing harder as we descended. There was no 

 evidence whatever of any disturbance of the earth below the three and 

 a half feet level, but this was at least four feet above the surface of the 

 valley. What natural agency, whether of deposit or of erosion, could 

 account for this perfectly circular raised mass of apparently primeval 

 clay? Or, if artificial, what was the object of its builders? The most 

 plausible conjecture presenting itself to our minds, as we stood there 

 in the focus, as it were, of a great natural amphitheater, was, that 

 these encircling blufts had been the gathering-place of some ancient 

 race, and this mound the altar or stage on which certain probably 

 bloodless religious or festive rites were wont to be solemnized in the 

 sight of assembled thousands, or whence the words of their chiefs could 

 reach the ears of a gathered people. Other theories might be ad- 

 vanced, but no other seemed tenable. 



Had the little valley once been a lake or swamp, the home of a 

 succession of animal architects? In that case, the tumulus would 

 have been made up largely of vegetable and animal debris. The soil 

 of the valley, too, would have consisted, for a considerable depth, of 

 humus or peat; but in reality the grass-roots reached a hard clay, 



