LIFE OF WILSON. 
CXXl 
up the earth to the depth of five or six feet. In this place I com- 
menced digging, and continued to labour for about an hour, exa- 
mining 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 neighbourhood presented me with some beads fashioned out 
of a kind of white stone, which were found in digging on the oppo- 
site side of this gigantic mound, where I found the hole still re- 
maining. The whole of an extensive plain a short distance from 
this is marked out with squares, oblongs and circles, one of which 
comprehends several 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 endeavoured 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 exca- 
vation and arching a most noble cellar might be formed for keep- 
ing 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 Jefferson’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 accusation of his father having killed all his family, had 
any truth in it ; but he replied that it had not. Logan, he said, 
had been misinformed; he detailed to me all the particulars, which 
are too long for repetition, and concluded by informing me that 
2 H 
VOL. IX, 
