LIFE OF WILSON. cix 



ly reflected in the smooth glassy surface below. I could only 

 discover when I was passing a clearing, by the crowing of 

 cocks; and now and then, in more solitary places, the big- 

 horned owl made a most hideous hollowing, that echoed among 

 the mountains. In this lonesome manner, with full leisure for 

 observation and reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and 

 hard births all night, to storms of rain, hail and snow, for it 

 froze severely almost every night, I persevered, from the 24th 

 of February to Sunday evening March 17th, when I moored 

 my skiff safely in Bear-Grass Creek, at the Rapids of the Ohio, 

 after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty miles. My hands 

 suffered the most; and it will be some weeks yet before they 

 recover their former feeling and flexibility. It would be the 

 task of a month to detail all the particulars of my numerous 

 excursions, in every direction from the river. In Steuben- 

 ville, Charlestown and Wheeling, I found some friends. At 

 Marietta I visited the celebrated remains of Indian fortifica- 

 tions, as they are improperly called, which cover a large space 

 of ground on the banks of the Muskingum. Seventy miles 

 above this, at a place called Big-Grave Creek, I examined 

 some extraordinary remains of the same kind there. The Big 

 Grave is three hundred paces round at the base, seventy feet 

 perpendicular, and the top, which is about fifty feet over, has 

 sunk in, forming a regular concavity, three or four feet deep. 

 This tumulus is in the form of a cone, and the whole, as well 

 as its immediate neighbourhood, is covered with a venerable 

 growth of forest, four or five hundred years old, which gives 

 it a most singular appearance. In clambering around its steep 

 sides, I found a place where a large white oak had been lately 

 blown down, and had torn up the earth to the depth of five or 

 six feet. In this place I commenced digging, and continued to 

 labour for about an hour, examining every handful of earth 

 with great care, but except some shreds of earthen ware, made 

 of a coarse kind of gritty clay, and considerable pieces of char- 

 coal, I found nothing else; but a person v of the neighbourhood 

 presented me with some beads, fashioned out of a kind of white 



