The morning of our arrival at this remarkable effigy—how shall we describe it? The time was June, and as Lowell phrased it, "What is so rare as a day in June?" We wound among picturesque scenes that were softened by the hazy clouds and reveled in the unsurprising riches of the charming landscape. The road led through thick forests of oaks, linden and maple, through smiling vales and to the crests of hills overlooking long open valleys with wooded heights beyond. Everything seemed to break forth into singing. Even the rippling streams chimed merrily in with the glad exultant songs of red wing black birds and fluting cardinals.
As we entered the park we were greeted by the cheery piping of the Baltimore oriole-a warm, rich welcome from this brilliantly colored bird as he fluttered about the elm like a dash of southern sunshine. Try as we would we found our thoughts straying from the dim days of the dead past to the ever living present, for bees and birds were busy everywhere, telling their joy in melodious and ecstatic notes.
European travelers say that our woods are nearly devoid of birds, and that the songs of such as we have are not to be compared with those about which their poets have written so charmingly. They never were out among our blossoming wilderness while the sun poured his first rays through delicate green leaves and mounds of flowers or they never would have written that way.
When from a rising eminence of land we let our eyes rove over the vast undulating country around us, only the more prominent features impress themselves on our view. The lesser details, the waving grain, the blossoming sumac, the small brooklet, which attract the immediate passerby, are lost in the distance, but the range of forest clad hills, the wide expanse of fertile plain, or the purpling hills in the distance, determine the landscape and claim our attention. So in the light of the present century let us note what we can of these ancient and forgotten people. "Distance lends enchantment to the view," and this is true of distance in time, or culture as well as in space.
In memory we live over again those scenes, when a strange race met in this very spot to worship. In fancy we see again vast multitudes of people who assembled at the head of a victorious warrior-king who returned from the field of battle, to offer sacrifice upon the altar in the center of the oval. The casting off of the old skin of the serpent may have been to these primitive people typical of immortality. "Then a kite, by producing death, would be to them the working of some powerful spirit through that serpent. Its power to destroy life no doubt caused it to be held in great veneration by many primitive tribes. Likewise any striking object in Nature, such as a river, lake, precipitous cliff, with singular shaped stone such as we have here on the crescent shaped plateau rising from Brush Creek, would have been regarded as the abode of some spirit and would be worshipped accordingly. That such objects are worshipped the world over we have abundant testimony, and it will be found in all such cases that there is some peculiarity about the contour of the land on which are placed these objects, that would be sure to catch the eye of a superstitious race."
There has been another serpent mound discovered in Warren County, but space forbids a description of it. Not far from the city of Toronto, Canada, we also find another.
"The Great Serpent Mound" in Adams County has a counterpart in the Old World. In Scotland there is a very remarkable and distinct serpent, constructed of stone. This work has so much in common with the Ohio serpent that we reproduce the description as given by Miss Gordon Cummin in Good Words for March, 1872.
"The mound is situated upon a grassy plain. The tail of the serpent rests near the shore of Loch Nell, and the mound gradually rises seventeen to twenty feet in height and is continued for three hundred feet, forming a double curve like the letter S, and wonderfully perfect in anatomical outline. This we perceive the more perfect on reaching the head, which lies at the western end… The head forms a circular cairn, on which, at the time of a visit there in 1871, there still remained some trace of an altar, which has since wholly disappeared. On excavating the circular cairn, or circle of stones forming the head, a chamber containing burnt bones, charcoal and burnt hazelnuts, and an implement of flint were found. The removal of peat, moss and heather from the back of the reptile showed that the whole length of the spine was carefully constructed, with regularly and symmetrically placed stones at such angles as to throw off rain… The spine is, in fact, a long narrow causeway made of large stones, set like the vertebrae of some huge animal. They form a ridge, sloping off at each side, which is continued downward with an arrangement of smaller stones suggestive of ribs. The mound has been formed in such a position that the worshippers standing at the altar would naturally look eastward, directly along the whole length of the great reptile and across the dark lake to the triple peaks of Ben Cruachan. This position must have been carefully selected, as from no other point are the three peaks visible. General Forlong, in commenting on this, says
"'Here, then, we have an earth-formed snake, emerging in the usual manner from the dark blue water, at the base, as it were, of a triple cone—Scotland's Mount Hermon—just as we so frequently meet snakes and their shrines in the East.'
"Is there not something more than mere coincidence in the resemblance between Loch Nell and the Ohio Serpent, to say nothing of the topography of their respective situations? Each has the head pointing west, and each terminates with a circular enclosure, containing an altar, from which, looking along the most prominent portion of the serpent, the rising sun may be seen. If the serpent of Scotland is the symbol of an ancient faith surely that of Ohio is the same."