56 ABORIGINAL MONUMENTS
single mound. It is found of every variety—the common or transparent, silvery or opaque, and graphic or hieroglyphical varieties. ‘Some specimens have a fine golden tinge, re- sembling Dutch leaf. It is sometimes neatly cut into orna- mental figures, discs, scrolls, and oval plates, which seem to have constituted ornaments for dresses. A quantity, cut into the form of discs each a foot in diameter, was found in a mound near Chillicothe ; the plates, which overlapped each other like the tiles of a roof, being so arranged as to form a crescent, five feet in diameter at the widest part, and upwards of twenty feet long. Some fine specimens of the graphic variety, in thin oval plates, were recently discoy- ered in a mound near Lower Sandusky, Ohio, which were supposed, by those who first examined them, to bear indu- bitable hieroglyphics. A native deposit of this variety occurs on the Susquehanna river, a few miles above the city of Philadelphia. The mineral must be referred to some primitive locality or localities, which it would be interesting to identify ; for, by the identification, accurate or approxi- mate, of the original sources of the various foreign articles found in the mounds, we are enabled to fix, with greater or less certainty, the extent of the intercourse, if not in some degree the direction of the migrations, of the ancient people.
It is in this view that the discovery of pearls and marine shells in the mounds, is specially interesting. Of the latter not less than five kinds have been recognised ; viz., the cassis (several varieties), the pyrula perversa, oliva, marginella, and natica. These shells are all found on our Southern shores.* They seem to have been chiefly
- Several of these shells, including the pyrula perversa and the cassis
cornutus, were discovered several years ago in a mound near Cincinnati, and others near Lexington, Ky., which have since figured largely in most specula- tions on American antiquities and the origin of the American race. They were assumed to be peculiar to Asia ; and, as similar shells were sacred to certain religious rites, or consecrated to certain gods of the Hindoos, have been cited in support of the hypothesis that the builders of the mounds had their origin in India. [See Delafield’s Inquiry, Bradford’s Researches, Laing’s
