LIFE OF WILSON. 
ClX 
ly reflected in the smooth glassy surface below. I could only 
discover when I was passing a clearing, by the crowing of 
cocks; and now and then, in more solitary places, the big- 
horned owl made a most hideous hollowing, that echoed among 
the mountains. In this lonesome manner, with full leisure for 
observation and reflection, exposed to hardships all day, and 
hard births all night, to storms of rain, hail and snow, for it 
froze severely almost every night, I persevered, from the 24th 
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 numerous 
excursions, in every direction from the river. In Steuben- 
ville, Charlestown and Wheeling, I found some friends. At 
Marietta I visited the celebrated remains of Indian fortifica- 
tions, 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 extraordinary 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 neighbourhood, is covered with a venerable 
growth of forest, four or five hundred years old, which gives 
it a most singular appearance. In clambering 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 
labour 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 char- 
coal, I found nothing else; but a person of the neighbourhood 
presented me with some beads, fashioned out of a kind of white 
