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is another piece of cedar wood, carved in a similar manner, 
and surrounded with shells, and arrows of small size. Some 
of these altars are of great antiquity, and the Indians allow 
no strangers to touch them. Nothing, however, is said of fires 
having been lighted upon these earth-altars of New Mexico. 
Solitary Mound near " Mound City." 
This mound is about a quarter of a mile to the south of 
Mound City." It is surrounded by a ditch and bank, enclos- 
ing an area of twenty-eight acres, the mound being in the centre. 
The height of the mound has been reduced by cultivation. It 
now stands about five feet above the level of the soil, and is 
about forty feet in diameter at the base. The "altar" in this 
mound dilfers from those already described, and appears to 
have been formed at different intervals of time. A circular 
cist, thirteen feet in diameter and eight inches in depth, 
was sunk below the level of the surface soil ; this was 
filled with fine sand, which was carefully levelled, the upper 
surface being perfectly horizontal. Upon this, fire appears to 
have been kept burning sufficiently long to discolour the sand to 
the depth of an inch. After this had taken place, a basin- 
shaped "altar" of sand was formed upon the horizontal sand- 
bed ; this basin measured seven feet in diameter, and was eight 
inches in depth; it was carefully paved with small round stones, 
each rather larger than a hen's egg, placed with great exact- 
ness, and firmly imbedded in the sand. Upon this paved altar 
some ashes, containing human bones, were found, and ten 
copper armlets, placed in two heaps, five in each, encircled some 
calcined bones. On the western slope of the altar were two 
thick plates of mica. Squier and Davis only met with one 
other mound in which the altar was covered with stones. In 
this mound, No. 5, "Clark's Work," there was also a layer of 
stone slabs, following the outline of the mound, at the depth of 
about three feet from the surface, in a similar manner to that of 
the layers of sand in the mounds previously described. 
"Clark's Work." 
"Clark's Work," on the north fork of Paint Creek, is one of 
the largest and most interesting earth-works in the Scioto 
Valley ; it is in the form of a parallelogram, 2800 feet long by 
