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 OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 37

stand apart from the enclosures, and, in their average dimensions, greatly exceed those of the first class. The celebrated mound at Grave Creek is of this class. They lack the gravel and sand strata, which characterize those already described, and are destitute of “altars.” They invariably cover a skeleton (sometimes more than one, as at Grave Creek), which, at the time of its interment, was enclosed in a rude framework of timber, or enveloped in bark or coarse matting, the traces, in some instances the very casts of which, remain. The structure of a single mound of this class will serve to exhibit their peculiarities.

Fie. 2.

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NY : JESSE

The mound, of which the above is a section,* stands on the third “bottom” or terrace of the Scioto river, six miles below the town of Chillicothe. There are no en- closures nearer than a mile ; though there are three or four other mounds, of smaller size, on the same terrace, within a few hundred yards. The mound is twenty-two feet high, by ninety feet base. The principal excavation was made


 * Horizontal scale thirty feet, and vertical fifteen feet, to the inch.