14 IXDIxVN MOUXDS. [CHAP. XXI. 



CHAP. XXL 



Indian Mounds and Block-house at Macon, Georgia. Fashion- 

 ists. Funeral of Northern Man. Geology and silicified 

 Corals and Shells. Stage travelling to Milledgeville. Negro 

 Children. Home-made Soap. Decomposition of Gneiss. 

 Deep Ravines recently excavated after clearing of Forest. 

 Man shot in a Brawl. Disappointed Place-Hunter . Lynch 

 Law in Florida. Repeal of English Corn-Laws. War 

 Spirit abating. 



Jan. 15. 1846. WHEN I was within twenty miles 

 of Macon, I left the hand-car and entered a railway- 

 train, which carried me in one hour into the town. 

 About a mile south of the place, we passed the base 

 of two conical Indian mounds, the finest monuments 

 of the kind I had ever seen. The first appearance 

 of a large steam-vessel ascending one of the western 

 tributaries of the Mississippi, before a single Indian 

 has been dispossessed of his hunting grounds, or a 

 single tree of the native forest has been felled., 

 scarcely affords a more striking picture of a wilder 

 ness invaded by the arts of civilised life, than Macon, 

 in Georgia, resounding to the sound of a locomotive 

 engine. On entering the town, my eye was caught 

 by a striking object, a wooden edifice of very peculiar 

 structure and picturesque form, crowning one of the 

 hills in the suburbs. This, I was told, on inquiry, 

 was a block-house, actually in use against the Indians 



