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Show 1836- 1837] F/ agg's Far West 1 $ j swept them with decay; but their years may be enumerated, and the circumstances, the authors, and the purposes of their origin, together with the incidents of their ruin, are chronicled on History's page for coming generations. But who shall tell the era of the origin of these venerable earth-heaps, the race of their builders, the purpose of their erection, the thousand circumstances attending their rise, history, desertion? Why now so lone and desolate? Where are the multitudes that once swarmed the prairie at their base, and vainly busied themselves in rearing piles which should exist the wonder of the men of other lands, and the sole monument of their own memory long after they themselves were dust? Has war, or famine, or pestilence brooded over these beautiful plains? or has the fiat of Omnipotence gone forth that as a race their inhabitants should exist no longer, and the death- angel been commissioned to sweep them from off the face of [ 130] the earth as if with destruction's besom? We ask: the inquiry is vain; we are answered not! Their mighty creations and the tombs of myriads heave up themselves in solemn grandeur before us; but from the depths of the dusky earth- heap comes forth no voice to tell us its origin, or object, or story! " Ye mouldering relics of a race deported* Your names have perished; not a trace remains, Save where the grassgrown mound its summit rears From the green bosom of your native plains." Ages since - long ere the first son of the Old World had pressed the fresh soil of the New; long before the bright region beyond the blue wave had been the object of the philosopher's revery by day and the enthusiast's vision by night - in the deep stillness and solitude of an unpeopled land, these vast mausoleums rose as now they rise, in lonely grandeur from the plain, and looked down, even as now |