“Near the base of the wall on the south side is a ditch, from sixteen to twenty feet wide, and six or eight deep. A short distance farther from the southern wall is another and much more extensive ditch or excavation. In some places it is seventy or eighty feet wide, and from twenty-five to thirty feet deep. The earth from these ditches was probably removed to cover the walls of the fort, or employed in the erection of the neighboring mounds, while the ditches themselves constituted an additional means of defence.
“About three quarters of a mile north of this work is a mound of an oblong form, about twenty-five feet high, one hundred feet long, and twenty broad. On the north-west, about half a mile distant, is another mound of similar form, twenty feet high, eighty long, and sixty wide. These mounds are constructed with the same regularity that distinguishes all the other works of similar character. On both these mounds, trees are growing as large as any in the surrounding forests.
“This work differs in its form, and in the material used in its construction, from all others in the vicinity; but it does not exhibit greater evidence of skill. The difference in form was probably owing to its location; it having evidently been made to conform in all respects to the nature of the ground. Stones were employed because they could be readily procured. Although the hammer had nothing to do with the preparation of the materials, it was nevertheless a work of great labor, and the place of location was selected with a military eye.”
Numerous other defensive works are represented to exist in Tennessee; but very few of them have been surveyed and described. In Bedford county there is a stone work of considerable size, the walls of which are said to be from sixteen to twenty feet wide at the base, and four to five feet wide on the top. Other works adjoin it. It is generally believed to have been erected by De Soto; but in 1819 an oak-tree standing on the wall was cut down, which exhibited three hundred and fifty-seven annual layers, and must consequently have been seventy-eight years old when De Soto landed in Florida.[24]
A stone work, less in size, but of the same general character, occurs in Larue p033 county, Kentucky. It is situated on one of the bluffs of the Rolling Fork of Salt river, where the creek makes a sharp bend. A plan of it is published in Collins’s History of Kentucky, p. 398. An account of another, of much the same character, in Allen county, is published in the same work, p. 167.
PLATE XII. No. 2.
This work is situated at the junction of the two principal forks of Twin creek, an affluent of the Great Miami river, six miles south-east of the town of Eaton, Preble county, Ohio, on S. E. corner of Sec. No. 10, Township 5, of Range 3, E. M. The plan is from a survey by Mr. MCBRIDE.
In position and mode of construction, this work does not differ materially from a number of others already described. The embankment has an average height of about four feet, and the ditch is not far from five feet deep. The bluff bordering upon the Franklin fork of the creek is for the most part precipitous, and has an average height of between fifty and sixty feet. At its base are several never-failing springs. The height of the bluff fronting upon the other fork varies from thirty feet near the end of the wall, to sixty feet at the junction of the two streams. At its highest part, the bluff consists of a conglomerate, composed of gravel and stones of considerable size. It is very porous, and overhangs about ten feet. There are a number of large cavities in it, which were once supposed to be artificial, and the entrances to subterranean chambers. They are formed by the disintegration of the materials composing the bluff.
Nearly in the centre of the work, in the position indicated in the plan, is a line of large stones. They occupy a space about seven hundred feet long, by twelve broad, and are laid compactly together. Though much sunk in the earth, they are yet distinctly traceable.