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Show 476 INDIAN BARROWS NEAR ST. LOUIS. cussion, are still involved in obscurity; while the government of the United States alone might have collected the necessary materials on the subject, if it had employed competent persons to excavate, carefully to examine, survey, and describe all the monuments of this kind that are scattered over the states of the Union. Even at this time, it is not wholly too late to do much towards the accomplishment of so interesting an inquiry; not a moment should, however, be lost. Baron Alexander Von Humboldt has given an interesting essay on the subject in his valuable works; and several American writers have collected and published many particulars respecting these remains. Of some of them Warden has given ground plans and sketches, but no favour able result can be expected till the excavation is prosecuted in earnest. Perhaps the flint knives resembling those of Mexico, of which I have given designs in Plate XLVIII,* might be found near St. Louis. These barrows have a close resemblance to the ancient German barrows which are everywhere found in our forests. A late traveller (Dr. De Wette) conjectures that the American barrows are not produced by art, but by nature, because there is no fosse round them from which the earth was taken; this notion is, however, very easily refuted, as the barrows and walls are arranged in regular figures and lines, and in like manner no fosse or excavation is to be seen round the barrows in the German forests. The earth was taken from the surface in the neighbourhood, but it was by no means necessary on that account to excavate a fosse. With regard to the regular position of the barrows of St. Louis, they have in this respect a close resemblance to the kurghans of the Russian steppes, which also lie in long regular lines. The very form, too, of both seems to be quite similar, if we except the stone images which are often seen on the kurghans. Pallas, in his " Tour through Southern Russia" (Vol. I. Vig. 1), gives a sketch of a row of barrows which perfectly resemble those of St. Louis. A pleasant westerly breeze which sprung up, was a great relief to us in the sultry heat, and continued till we returned to the shady forests on Kahokia Creek, which we reached at two - o'clock. Numerous tortoises live in this stream. The banks of the Mississippi, near St. Louis, are likewise remarkable for various impressions of shells and zoophytes in the limestone; among them are the beautiful crinoides, which are found in great perfection close to the buildings of the town. Mr. Lesueur has collected and sent to France specimens of all these fossil remains, and every information on the subject is contained in his and other similar works. I neglected, while I was at St. Louis, to see the tame buffaloes which Mr. Pierre Chouteau kept on his estate near the town, though I should have been very glad, for many reasons, to have seen these animals in a domestic state. I have been frequently told, in America, of hybrids of the buffalo (bison) and the tame race, but never saw any; and several naturalists, especially Mr. Thomas Say, have * I must mention that in the note to page 80 of this work, I have forgotten the references to the figures of the two ancient Indian knives. Fig. 1 represents the Mexican obsidian knife ; fig. 2, the flint-stone knife from the barrows of New Harmony. |