OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 67
All carvings from the mounds are exquisitely wrought ; and in all cases where the material will admit of it, beauti- fully polished. We can scarcely understand how, in the absence of instruments of iron, the carvings were executed. It may be suggested that they were rubbed into shape upon hard rocks ; but, apart from the incredible labor of such a process, and the palpable impossibility of securing the deli- cate features which some possess, by such means, we find some of the unfinished specimens which show that, how- ever the general outline was secured, all the lines and more delicate features were cut or graved in the stone, The copper tools, resembling gravers, seem hardly adequate to this work, but they are the only instruments discovered which appear at all adapted to the purpose.*
- It is probably unnecessary to say, that the mound-builders did not attempt
the working of large stones, for building or other purposes. They occasionally broke up or quarried through the sand strata, in defending their military po- sitions, but none of the disrupted stones bear the marks ef edge tools. Mr. Atwater (Archeologia Americana, vol. i. p. 150) is the only authority for any thing of the kind. He describes certain “ wells,’ in the bed of Paint Creek, twelve miles distant from Chillicothe, which “ were dug through the solid slate rock, and each covered over by a stone about the size and shape of a common millstone. These covers,” continues the account, “had each a hole through the centre, about four inches in diameter, through which a large handspike or pry might be put for the purpose of removing them off and on the we wells, at the top, were more than three feet in diameter; and stones, weli wrought with tools, so as to make good joints, were laid around the hole. I had a good opportunity to examine these wells; the stream in which they were sunk being very low. The covers are now broken in pieces, and the wells filled with pebbles, &c.”
These astonishing wells, sunk through the solid rock, with stones, “ well wrought with tools,’ around them, and possessing cyclopean covers, have filled no small space, at home and abroad, in every chapter of speculations upon American antiquities. Indeed, they have been regarded, in many respects, as the most remarkable remains of antiquity within the limits of the Umited States, —although the reason for sinking wells in the bed ofa creek was probably never very obvious to any mind, The reader will hardly be prepared, after these details, presented upon the personal responsibility of the author in question, to learn that the “wells” are simple casts of huge septaria, parallel ranges of which run through the slate strata of this region. The cyclopean “ covers” are sep=
