Is it not more reasonable to suppose that civilized man existed on the American Continent thirty thousand years ago, (the age fixed by geologists for the coming of the Drift,) a comparatively short period of time, and that his works were then covered by the Drift-débris, than to believe that a race of human beings, far enough advanced in civilization to manufacture bricks, and build pavements and cisterns, dwelt in the Mississippi Valley, in a past so inconceivably remote that the slow increase of the soil,
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by vegetable decay, has covered their works to the depth of seventy feet?
I come now to the most singular and marvelous revelation of all:
Professor Alexander Winchell, in an interesting and recent work,[1] says:
"I had in my possession for some time a copper relic resembling a rude coin, which was taken from an artesian boring at the depth of one hundred and fourteen feet, at Lawn Ridge, Marshall County, Illinois.
"Mr. W. H. Wilmot, then of Lawn Ridge, furnished me, in a letter dated December 4, 1871, the following statement of deposits pierced in the boring:
| Soil | 3 feet. |
| Yellow clay | 17 " |
| Blue clay | 44 " |
| Dark vegetable matter | 4 " |
| Hard purplish clay | 18 " |
| Bright green clay | 8 " |
| Mottled clay | 18 " |
| Soil | 2 " |
| Depth of coin | 114 " |
| Yellow clay | 1 " |
| Sand and clay. | |
| Water, rising 60 feet. |
"In a letter of the 27th of December, written from Chillicothe, Illinois, he stated that the bore was four inches for eighty feet, and three inches for the remainder of the depth. But before one hundred feet had been reached the four-inch portion was 'so plastered over as to be itself but three inches in diameter,' and hence the 'coin' could not have come from any depth less than eighty feet.
"'Three persons saw "the coin" at the same instant, and each claims it.' This so-called coin was about the