LIFE OF WILSON. Ixsr 



the big-borned owl made a most hideous hallooing, that echoed among the 

 mountains. In this lonesome manner, with full leisure for observation and 

 reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and hard berths all night, to storms 

 of rain, hail, and snow, for it froze severely almost every night, I persevered, 

 from the S4th of February to Sunday evening, March 17th, when I moored 

 my skiff safely in Bear-Grass Creek, at the Rapids of the Ohio, after a voyage 

 of seven hundred and twenty miles. My hands suffered the most; and it 

 will be some weeks yet before they recover their former feeling and flexibility. 

 " It would be the task of a month to detail all the particulars of my nume- 

 rous excursions, in every direction from the river. In Steubenville, Charles- 

 town and Wheeling, I found some friends. At Marietta I visited the cele- 

 brated remains of Indian fortifications, as they are improperly called, which 

 cover a large space of ground on the banks of the Muskingum. Seventy 

 miles above this, at a place called Big-Grave Creek, I examined some extraor- 

 dinary remains of the same kind there. The big grave is three hundred 

 paces round at the base, seventy feet perpendicular, and the top, which is about 

 fifty feet over, has sunk in, forming a regular concavity, three or four feet 

 deep. This tumulus is in the form of a cone, aud the whole, as well as its 

 immediate neighborhood, is covered with a venerable growth of forest, four or 

 five hundred years old, which gives it a most singular appearance. In clam- 

 bering around its steep sides, I found a place where a large white-oak had been 

 lately blown down, and had torn up the earth to the depth of five or six feet. 

 In this place I commenced digging, and continued to labor for about an hour, 

 examining every handful of earth with great care, but except some shreds of 

 earthen ware, made of a coarse kind of gritty clay, and considerable pieces of 

 charcoal, I found nothing else; but a person of the neighborhood presented 

 me with some beads, fashioned out of a kind of white stone, which were found 

 in digging on the opposite side of this gigantic mound, where I found the hole 

 still remaining. The whole of an extensive plain a short distance from this is 

 marked out with squares, oblongs and circles, one of which comprehends seve- 

 ral acres. The embankments by which they are distinguished are still two or 

 three feet above the common level of the field. The Big Grave is the property 

 of a Mr. Tomlinson, or Tumblestone, who lives near, and who would not expend 

 three cents to see the whole sifted before his face. I endeavored to work on 

 his avarice, by representing the probability that it might contain valuable 

 matters, and suggested to him a mode by which a passage might be cut into 

 it level with the bottom, and by excavation and arching, a most noble cellar 

 might be formed for keeping his turnips and potatoes. " All the turnips and 

 potatoes I shall raise this dozen years," said he, " would not pay the expense." 

 This man is no antiquary, or theoretical farmer, nor much of a practical one 

 either I fear ; he has about two thousand acres of the best land, and just makes 

 out to live. Near the head of what is called the Long Reach, I called on a 

 certain Michael Cressap, son to the noted Colonel Cressap, mentioned in Jef- 

 ferson's Notes on Virginia. From him I received the head of a Paddle fish, 

 the largest ever seen in the Ohio, which I am keeping for Mr. Peale, with 

 various other curiosities. I took the liberty of asking whether Logan's accu- 

 sation of his father having killed all his family, had any truth in it ; but he 



