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 of the first, 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 horseshoe, incrusted with the rust of ages, and found far below the soil, and a copper axe, weighing about two pounds, singularly tempered and of peculiar construction.
"These relics, he thinks, belonged to a race of 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 below 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 contain skeletons of human beings, and display immense labor. Many of them are regular 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 Cincinnati, 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 implements indicate a race inferior to the first, which was acquainted with the use of iron.
"The third race are the Indians now existing on the Western Territories. 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 memorials! On this very spot
