25G MEXICO. 
seen, and a large portion of South America, is strewn with these or 
similar remains, from Canada to far below the equator. Here, in the 
north, it is supposed that there were three races, succeeding each other, 
two of which have vanished even from tradition. 
" The monuments oi" the Jirst, or primitive race," said the late William 
Wirt, " are regular stone walls, wells stoned up, brick hearths, found in 
digging the Louisville canal, medals of copper, silver swords, and other 
implements of iron. Mr. Flint assures us that he has seen these strange 
ancient swords. He has also examined a small iron shoe, like a horse- 
shoe, incrusted with the rust of ages, and found far below the soil, and a 
copper axe, weighing about two pounds, singularly tempered and of pecul- 
iar construction. 
" These relics, he thinks, belonged to a race o^ civilized men, who must 
have disappeared many centuries ago. To this race he attributes the 
hieroglyphic characters found on the limestone bluffs ; the remains of cities 
and fortifications in Florida ; the regular banks of ancient live-oaks near 
them ; and the bricks found at Louisville, nineteen feet helow the surface, 
in regular hearths, with the coals of the last domestic fire upon them; — these 
bricks were hard and regular, and longer in proportion to their width than 
those of the present day. 
" To the second race of beings are attributed the vast mounds of earth, 
found throughout the whole western region, from Lake Erie and western 
Pennsylvania to Florida and the Rocky mountains. Some of them con- 
tain skeletons of human beings, and display immense labor. Many of 
them are regtilar mathematical figures, parallelograms and sections of 
circles, showing the remains of gateways and subterranean passages. 
Some are eighty feet high, and have trees growing on them, apparently 
of the age of five hundred years. They are generally of a soil differing 
from that which surrounds them, and they are most common in situations 
where it since has been found convenient to build towns and cities. 
" One of these mounds was levelled in the centre of Chillicothe, and 
cart-loads of human bones removed from it. Another may be seen in Cin- 
cinnati, in which a thin circular piece of gold, alloyed with copper, was 
found last year. Another in St. Louis, named the " Falling Garden," is 
pointed out to strangers as a great curiosity. 
" Many fragments of earthenware, some of curious workmanship, have 
been dug up throughout this vast region ; some represented drinking vessels, 
some human heads, and some idols ; — they all appear to have been moulded 
by the hand, and hardened in the sun. These mounds and earthen im- 
plements indicate a race inferior to \hQ first, which was acquainted with 
the use of iron. 
" The third race are the Indians now existing on the Western Terri- 
tories. In the profound silence and solitude of these regions, and above 
the bones of a buried world, how must a philosophic traveller meditate 
upon the transitory state of human existence, when the only traces of the 
beings of two races of men are these strange me?norials ! On this very spot 
