AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. 145 



Egyptian heads, wHcli presented a most impressive and awe-inspiring 

 effect as they were illuminated by the torchlight. Those sweet, sad 

 faces looked down upon us from the ancient ages, like the souls of the 

 departed. One of the passages opening on the north side seemed to 

 follow the course of the river, and it is believed extends to the great 

 mound, now being removed, on the North Missouri Railroad, which was 

 the theme of much interesting remark at the last meeting of the 

 Historical Society ;" — was indeed, in all probability, the germ of the 

 latter marvel. American mounds, it must be remembered, are very 

 different affairs from the little mole-hills on which Sir Richard Colt 

 Hoare and his successots have industriously toiled, with corresponding 

 results. The American grave mound is an earth-pyramid approaching 

 rather to the proportions of Silbury Hill than those of the ordinary 

 Anglo-Saxon barrow. Its exploration is, therefore, no ordinary labour ; 

 and it would obviously never do for such a " parturient mountain " to 

 produce no more than a broken pipkin, or some Indian arrow-heads. 

 Something very different is looked for; and — unless the explorer is 

 wholly ignorant of the duty he owes to the community, — has to be 

 found, if not by actual discovery, then by interpretation. A theory 

 of relationship between the special mound, and any others, how- 

 ever remote, is one of the simplest and most honest solutions of the 

 difficulty. In one ease the greatest satisfaction has been derived from 

 the demonstration that the mound in question, when connected by 

 imaginary straight lines with two others, some miles off, made a 

 triangle, of which one of the angles approximated to a right angle. 

 Had it only been proved that all the three angles were equal to two 

 right angles, it would, no doubt, have demonstrated that pre-eminence 

 of the lost science of the New World, of which no antiquary of the 

 Great West entertains any doubt. 



But to return to the narrative of the St. Louis Repuhlican; much 

 more follows in the usual thorough-going style of such New World 

 discoveries. There is a mound, known as the Big Mound, about a 

 mile above the bridge ; another known as the Monk's Mound, on the 

 other side of the river; and a whole chain of similar earth pyramids 

 " extending from the river to the bluffs, a distance of nine miles. It 

 is conjectured that the tunnel under the river and the mounds are con- 

 nected, and that there was in ancient times an opening through the 

 mounds from this subterraneous highway." 



But leaving conjecture, one more bit of ''personal observation" may 

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