LIFE OF WILSON. 
Ixxv 
the big-liorned owl made a most hideous hallnoing, that echoed among the 
mountains. In this lonesome m;niner, 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 tlie 24th of February to Sunday evening, March 17th. when I moored 
my skiflF safely in Bear-Grass Creek, at the Ilapids of the Ohio, after a voyage 
of seven hundred and twenty miles. iMy hands suffered the most; and it 
will be some weeks yet before they recover their furmer 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 ol' tlie 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, and 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 Beach, 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 
