CHAPTER XI. THE ANCIENT MOUNDS.
The morning of the third day found us passing Sisterville, in Virginia. Soon afterward we passed New-Martinsville. We saw several mounds. One was very small. Another was large, but somewhat disfigured by having been excavated.
We were now approaching a village on the Virginia side called Elizabethtown, near which a small stream joins the Ohio, known by the name of Big Grave Creek. In this village of Elizabethtown is one of the largest, most perfect, and most beautiful mounds to be found in the whole Ohio country.
We were told of this curiosity before we reached the place; so that we were not taken by surprise. Besides, the boat stopped a few moments at the wharf, in full sight of it, not a quarter of a mile distant.
This mound is about one hundred and eighty feet in diameter at its base, and some seventy or seventy-five feet high. On its top is an old tower or observatory, around which are several trees, some of them of considerable age. One, a venerable oak, is four feet in diameter.
The center of its top is a kind of crater or basin, four feet deep and eight or ten across it. Elsewhere the top of the mound is perfectly flat.
One puzzler to the traveler is, where the earth was obtained for building such a huge pile; for it is situated almost in the middle of a large plain, on and near which is no appearance of any former excavation for this purpose. There are, however, several smaller mounds a little east of it.