meditate upon the power which reared them and is departed? Why does the poet, the man of genius and fancy, or the philosopher of mind and nature, seat himself at their base, and, with strange and undefined emotions, pause and ponder amid the loneliness which slumbers around? And surely, if the far traveller, as he wanders through this Western Valley, may linger around these aged piles and meditate upon a power departed, a race obliterated, an influence swept from the earth for ever, and dwell with melancholy emotions upon the destiny of man, is it not meet that those into whose keeping they seem by Providence consigned should regard them with interest and emotion? that they should gather up and preserve every incident relevant to their origin, design, or history which may be attained, and avail themselves of every measure which may give to them perpetuity, and hand them down, undisturbed in form or character, to other generations? The most plausible, and, indeed, the only plausible argument urged by those who deny the artificial {132} origin of the ancient mounds, is _their immense size_. There are, say they, "many mounds in the West that exactly correspond in _shape_ with these supposed antiquities, and yet, from their _size_, most evidently were not made by man;" and they add that "it would be well to calculate upon the ordinary labour of excavating canals, how many hands, with spades, wheelbarrows, and other necessary implements, it would take to throw up mounds like the largest of these within any given time."[110] We are told that in the territory of Wisconsin and in northern Illinois exist mounds to which these are molehills. Of those, Mount Joliet, Mount Charles, Sinsinewa, and the Blue Mounds vary from one to four hundred feet in height; while west of the Arkansas exists a range of earth-heaps ten or twelve miles in extent, and two hundred feet high: there also, it might be added, are the Mamelle Mountains, estimated at one thousand feet.[111] The adjacent country is prairie; farms exist on the summits of the mounds, which from their declivity are almost inaccessible, and _springs gush out from their sides_. With but one exception I profess to know nothing of these mounds from personal observation; and, consequently, can hazard no opinion of their character. The fact of the "gushing springs," it is true, {133} savours not much of artificialness; and in this respect, at least, do these mounds differ from those claimed as of artificial origin. The earth-heaps of which I have been speaking can boast no "springs of water gushing from their sides;" if they could, the fact would be far from corroborating the theory maintained. The analogy between these mounds is admitted to be strong, though there exist diversities; and were there _none_, even Bishop Butler says that we are not to infer a thing true upon slight presumption, since "there may be probabilities on both sides of a question." From what has been advanced relative to