Page:A Physical and Topographical Sketch of the Mississippi Territory, Lower Louisiana, and a Part of West Florida.djvu/27

 intersected with a few small rivers that never overflow their banks. The whole space between these two places may be called an extensive sand plain. The only interruption to its champaign character is in one or two places almost contiguous to the gulf, where we meet with some curious mounds of oyster shells, of a very singular appearance. Some of them cover more than an acre in circumference; and are from fifty to sixty feet in height. When they are denudated of a black mould, of from six inches to one foot deep, which produces several kinds of small trees, such as the cornus florida, prunus alba, myrica, &c. The shells look as fresh as if they had not been there more than one or two years; and are so free from any kind of foreign matter, that the people of Mobille and New Orleans convert them into excellent lime, by only making small excavations in these banks, and placing fire in them. I have often, when looking at these mounds, been reminded of Ossian's feasts of shells. I can never believe they were thrown up here by accidental means; but have thought it more probable that they have been carried here by some of the nations of men that once inhabited these shores. When, perhaps, their religion had the building up of mounds as one of its rituals; or, what is still more reasonable, it was then their custom, when meeting in large bodies, for the purposes of war, or the more pacifick measures of their savage cabinets, to repair to the confines of the Mexican gulf, to make its shelly and finny inhabitants tributary to their wants at this interesting period; and that each of these mounds has been the receptacle for the feastings of a whole nation.