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Show 184 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 26 upon the prairie at a distance of three or four miles, the celebrated " Monk Hill, 1' largest monument of the kind yet discovered in North America, heaving up its giant, forest- clothed [ 159] form in the midstug What are the reflections to which this stupendous earth- heap gives birth? What the associations which throng the excited fancy? What a field for conjecture! What a boundless range for the workings of imagination! What eye can view this venerable monument of the past, this mighty landmark in the lapse of ages, this gray chronicler of hoary centuries, and turn away uninterested? As it is first beheld, surrounded by the lesser heaps, it is mistaken by the traveller for an elevation of natural origin: as he draws nigh, and at length stands at the base, its stupendous magnitude, its lofty summit, towering above his head and throwing its broad shadow far across ( he meadow; its slopes ploughed with yawning ravines by the torrents of centuries descending to the plain; its surface and declivities perforated by the habitations of burrowing animals, and carpeted with tangled thickets; the vast size of the aged oaks rearing themselves from its soil; and, finally, the farmhouse, with its various structures, its garden, and orchard, and well rising upon the broad area of the summit, and the carriage pathway winding up from the base, all confirm his impression that no hand but that of the Mightiest could have reared the enormous mass. At that moment, should he be assured that this vast earth- heap was of origin demon- °* This group of Indian mounds, probably the most remarkable in America, is on the American Bottom, along the course of Canteen Creek, which rises in the southern portion of Madison County, Illinois, flows west, and enters Cahokia Creek. Monk, or Cahokia, Mound, about eight miles from St. Louis, is the most important of the group. William McAdams, who made a careful surrey of this mound, wrote a good description of it in his Records of Ancient Races m the Mississippi Valley ( St. Louis, 1887); also £. G. Squier and £. H. Davis, " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, comprising the Result of extensive original Surveys and Explorations," in Smithsonian Contributions, i.- ED. |