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58 by them as a protection from their foes, and used very much as Starved Bock, on the Illinois River, was by the Illinois Indians.

The question will occur, where did they obtain their water for domestic purposes! On the west side, just within the end of the wall, there is a deep, narrow fissure in the rocks, down which one man at a time might go; and it is only a few feet from the bottom of this fissure to the stream that comes down the rocks. Evidently there is always a little water here, and it is quite palatable, as we found by trial. This may have been their mode of egress and ingress to the inclosure.

We found very little remains of the former occupants. At one place beneath the stones, evidently just south of what was the south side of the wall, we found a broken arrow-head of white flint, the only relic discovered in the inclosure. We did not dig into the ground, either south or north of the wall, not seeing any elevation that looked like a mound. I would add further, in relation to the bluff, that the fissure just spoken of, inside the western extremity of the wall, is the only place where it is possible to reach the top from any point south of the wall.

That it was a place of refuge from any body of men using fire-arms does not seem probable, for the following reason: In addition to the evidence which the broken arrow-head affords, the bluff to the south, across the creek, is considerably higher than this one, and is within range of a rifle, but would not be within arrow-shot. This, and the fact that there seems to be no tradition of the building of the wall, would lead us to conclude that it antedates the white settlements of this region. It is not far from a number of Indian mounds to the north, or a little west of north, that seem to form a nearly continuous line with others still farther north. One of these mounds I opened in 1878.

 

Along the range of sandstone bluffs that traverse Southern Illinois running eastward and forming the 'water-shed between the tributaries of Big Muddy River on the north and Cache River on the south, and from 16 to 20 miles east of the Mississippi River, I have been making a few discoveries which prove that the sheltered nooks formed by the projecting cliffs were the favorite abodes of an ancient race that once peopled the Mississippi Valley.

The first place investigated is 2 miles east of Cobden, Ill., under a projecting cliff of sandstone (millstone grit) about 60 feet high and facing the east.

Around an ancient fire-bed, not more than 1 foot below the surface, in a loose, porous clay, were found charred bones, flint chippings, fragments of arrow-heads of very rough workmanship, fragments of rude 