ANCIENT WORKS IN THE VICINITY OF LAKE MICHIGAN. 15 



beaver. This industrious little animal had here set up a colony, and erected his 

 works; his "nation" has had its rise, and its decline and fall, since the aboriginal 

 structures were abandoned. 



Further up the creek, on the west side, north of the plank road, and not far 

 from some very large mounds, are three similar works, except that they are not 

 on the immediate bank of the creek. Two of them are represented in Fig. G. 



The inclosure is about one hundred feet long, and thirty wide, in its greatest 

 dimensions. The opening at d appears to have been caused by the washing away 

 of the earth by the rain that fell within the inclosure. The walls were nine feet 

 wide and one foot high. The small size of these inclosurcs prevents their ranking 

 with the "works of defence" or other extensive embankments described in the first 

 and second volumes of the Smithsonian Contributions; and we can only suppose 

 them to be the remains of ancient buildings, or structures of some kind, needful 

 in the simple condition of those who erected them. 



A few rods east of the cemetery, on the land of Mrs. Hull, may be seen a re- 

 markable excavation, surrounded in part by the earth thrown from it. (See Plate 

 IX. Fig. 1.) It has four sloping ways or entrances, one of them very much 

 elongated ; and the reader will not fail to discover in its general figure that of a 

 lizard mound reversed. There are other similar excavations to be described here- 

 after; from some of which, if we could take a cast and reverse it, we should have 

 an exact representation of a lizard mound. 



At Walker's Point were several circular mounds and lizard mounds, now dug 

 away in the process of grading streets. One of them, exhibited in section, was 



ri5i^=^--;-. ■■,■■,:■, 



r^ 



^ ITa 





-Sl^- 



-';rJ,i,.;=t:r 



'rrl 



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^i 



Js3 



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rd bliLc cl^y-^^ 



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.= — .»— --^_ 



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Lizard iiiound, Wiilker's Poiut. 



examined during the excavation, and found to be composed of whitish clay, of 

 uniform texture and appearance. The blue, yellow, and red clays, found abund- 



