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Show DESTRUCTION OF INDIAN ANTIQUITIES----FLAT BOATS. 67 place is small, but it has neat brick buildings, some of which looked like churches. We have read much about the ancient Indian remains and ramparts, between the Ohio and the Mus-kingum. Smith Barton, Attwater, Schultz, and especially Warden, have written on this highly interesting subject, and given ground plans of the Indian ramparts, which are met with at many places in the state of Ohio, at Cincinnati, Wheeling, Chillicothe, as well as in all the States west of the Alleghanys, and respecting which Warden has collected everything that is known; but most of these interesting remains have been entirely annihilated by the love of devastation, or the negligence of the new settlers. Thus Marietta is built just on the fore part of the Indian works, and many of them are no longer to be seen. It is much to be lamented that the government of the United States suffers all this to be done without any attempt to prevent it. It looks on unmoved, while the plough continues from year to year the destruction of these remains of ages long since past, the only historical monuments of this country. Schultz gave, in 1820, a ground plan of the ramparts near Marietta, as Smith Barton and Warden did more recently; and Mr. Thomas Say made a sketch of them in 1815, which he communicated to me. A great part of them has been since ploughed over. From Marietta we came to the Island of Muskingum, and then to Vienna Island ; opposite to which, on the left bank, lies the village of Vienna. Swallows, which had long since left Pennsylvania, were still flying about here. We everywhere heard accounts of the great flood in the Ohio, when the steam-boats were on a level with the second story of the houses in Marietta. We saw tall forest trees, among the thick branches of which the river had deposited beams and other pieces of wood.* Below Parkersburg, a village on the southern side, the little Kenhava River issues from the high bank opposite Belpie, a settlement of a few houses. A steam-boat, which had been entirely crushed by the ice, proved how violent the effects of the breaking up of the ice in the Ohio sometimes are. Our captain lay to for the night, on the right bank, which was necessary, on account of the unfavourable weather ; the rain being so heavy, that it drenched the upper row of beds in the large cabin. On the 11th October the weather was fairer, but very cool. The appearance of the bank was the same as before-an unbroken, thick forest, with here and there some little settlements. We reached, at an early hour, the Little Hocking River, which comes from the state of Ohio. Ducks, particularly teal, flew past us, and we observed, also, many other birds of passage on their flight. Near Shade Creek, the banks of the river consisted of stratified, rocky walls, which appeared to be Grauwacke slate; we observed, in the forest, trees of remarkable forms and colours; the trunks, covered with the scarlet foliage of the five-leaved ivy, were particularly beautiful. We frequently met, in the river, with flat boats, which are built all along the banks * Audubon (see "Ornithological Biography," vol. i. p. 156) mentions an instance of a cow that swamin to the window of a house which was seven feet above the ground, and sixty feet above low-watermark. |