INDIAN ANTIQUITIES ST LOUIS. 263 



ignis fatuus that may dance before his imagination. From 

 this source the erratic habits of the American population may 

 perhaps arise, as well as many of their peculiarities of man 

 ners and customs. But without pursuing this subject into its 

 various ramifications, I may remark that the temporary houses, 

 fences, and generally uncomfortable nature of a Western 

 American farmer s establishment, may be the result of con 

 stantly looking forward to departing from his residence, and 

 seeking to have little property but what can be easily tran 

 sported. 



On reaching St Louis, I found the hotels crowded ; my 

 first two applications for accommodation being unsuccess 

 ful, I at last gained admittance into a secondary hotel, to 

 which I was recommended by the landlord from St Charles. 

 I slept in an apartment containing two beds, which were 

 occupied, and the arrangements and customs of the hotel were 

 similar to those I had hitherto frequented. Two days were 

 spent in St Louis and its neighbourhood, on both of which I 

 examined some mounds, or tumuli, of a former race of people, 

 some of which are on the north skirts of St Louis, and many 

 more on the opposite side of the river. 



These mounds are found over the whole of the valley of the 

 Mississippi, and many conjectures exist regarding their origin. 

 They are found of all sizes and shapes, from the finished pyramid 

 to the perpendicular square, a few feet in height. Soon after 

 my arrival at St Louis, I found one in the town, of an oblong 

 shape, fifty yards in length, and finished with a regular pitch 

 of about forty feet in perpendicular height, while another, at 

 a short distance, with sloping sides, had an unfinished top 

 thirty-four by forty-four yards. Some tumuli have been 

 examined, and found to contain immense quantities of human 

 bones and broken pottery, which has given rise to a general 

 opinion that they were the burying-places of former ages. 

 Besides tumuli there are other antiquities of forts, camps, or 

 towns, the best specimens of which are in Ohio ; and a fort in 

 the neighbourhood of Newark, in that state, contains forty 

 acres within its walls, which are about ten feet high. The 

 Indians of the present day in the northern and middle parts of 

 the valley of the Mississippi, are neither sufficiently numerous 



