34 



ANTIQUITIES OF WISCONSIN. 



arranged in roAvs, more or less regular, along the margin of a brook or valley, as 

 shown by Fig. 10. Usually two or three mounds near the middle of the row are. 

 larger than the others. 



Row of Mounds near Fulton. 



Three are found on the east side of the outlet, half a mile below Fulton, and a 

 group a mile above the town. Two miles above, on section eleven, is a group of 

 eight (see Fig 10), situated on the edge of a prairie, so as to be seen in profile, as 

 represented in the figure. About a mile below the village, there is a group of 

 fourteen, and another on the side of Rock river. All these are circular mounds, 

 unaccompanied by others of imitative forms, &c. Some have been opened, and 

 are said in most cases to have contained remains of human skeletons, frequently 

 of several persons in the same tumulus. 



We visited the mounds noted by the surveyors of the public land near the north- 

 east corner of the town of Dunkirk, in Dane^ county. When seen from a distance, 

 they might readily be mistaken for a group of large, ancient, artificial mounds : but 

 closer observation shows that they are only abrupt natural swells or elevations, 

 here very numerous, which have been aptly compared to the waves of the sea. 



Natural Mounds, northeast corner of the town of Dunkirk, Dane county, Wisconsin. 



The sketch (Fig. 11) was taken with the aid of a card, in the centre of which 

 was a square opening crossed by threads, so as to form little squares, as recom- 

 mended by Mr. Parrot.^ 



A few miles above Fulton, the river expands into a broad and shallow lake, 

 known lay its Indian name of Koshkonong, said to mean " the lake we live on." 

 It is eight miles long, with an average breadth of two miles and five eighths ; the 

 periphery, measuring all the sinuosities of the shore, is twenty-eight miles and 

 three quarters ; the area, twenty-one square miles. According to the report of Capt. 

 T. J. Cram, there is a rapid current, extending about six hundred feet into the 

 lake, with a depth of water of only from two to three feet. In the other portion of 

 the lake, on the usual channel or track for boats and rafts, the water is from four 



* Not Dade county, as spelt in Vol. I. of Smithsonian Contributions. 

 ^ Journey to Ararat, &c. 



