224: DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



their works, Prof. M. C. Read, with apparent good 

 grounds for so doing, has remarked that the evidence was 

 well-nigh conclusive that when occupied by this people 

 and these works erected, the site and the surrounding 

 country was a treeless region. He writes : " Their erec- 

 tion with mound-builders' tools, if it involved the clearing 

 of a forest as a preliminary work, is so nearly impossible 

 that we can not imagine it would be ever undertaken. It 

 involved not only the clearing of the lands of the forest, 

 but also the neighboring lands which were to be subjected 

 to tillage. It is with the utmost difficulty, in moist and 

 tropical climates, that men armed with the best of steel 

 tools make a successful battle with the forests. It is much 

 more reasonable to suppose that these works were origi- 

 nally located in a treeless region, and the works evidently 

 of the same age scattered over (this portion of Ohio) indi- 

 cate that this treeless region was of large extent. . . . The 

 inference would follow that the abandonment of the region 

 marked the time when the slow intrusion of the forests 

 reduced the amount of tillable land below the necessities 

 of the community. "When this took place can only be 

 vaguely estimated, but that it was many hundreds of years 

 ago is beyond all question. It required many centuries, 

 as has been frequently proved, for a mixed forest growth 

 to take possession of a country." It is in vain to attempt 

 to express by numbers the age of an earth-work, but a 

 scientific examination of both the structure and its sur- 

 roundings may demonstrate a relative age that antedates 

 all history. 



This has already been accomplished, so far as the Ser- 

 pent Mound is concerned. It is a veritable relic of re- 

 mote antiquity. 



By whom was the Serpent Mound erected ? Here we 

 are confronted by a problem that probably will never be 

 solved to universal satisfaction. It is an unfortunate fact 



