NOTE. A late traveller, Rev. Samuel Parker, speaks thus of these mounds: "The mounds, which some have called the work of unknown generations of men, were scattered here in all varieties of form and magnitude, thousands in number. Some of them were conical, some elliptical, some square, and some parallelograms. One group attracted my attention particularly. They were twelve in number, of conical form, with their bases joined, and twenty or thirty feet high. They formed two-thirds of a circle, with an area of two hundred feet in diameter. If these were isolated, who would not say they were artificial? But, when they are only a group among a thousand others, who will presume to say they all are the work of man?... "It is said by those who advocate the belief that they are the work of ancient nations; that they present plain evidence of this in the fact that they contain human bones, articles of pottery, and the like. That some of them have been used for burying-places, is undoubtedly true; but may it not be questioned whether they were _made_, or only _selected_, for burying-places? No one who has ever seen the thousands and ten thousands scattered through the Valley of the Mississippi will be so credulous as to believe that a hundredth part of them were the work of man." "From the top of the highest mound, a delightful prospect presented itself,--the lowland of the Missouri covered with an undulating grass nearly five feet high, gradually rising into a second plain, where rich weeds and flowers were interspersed with copses of the Osage plum. Farther back from the river were seen small groves of trees, an abundance of grapes, the wild cherry of the Missouri,--resembling our own, but larger, and growing on a small bush. The plums are of three kinds,--two of a yellow color, and distinguished by one of the species being larger than the other; a third species of red color. All have an excellent flavor, particularly the yellow kind." PIPE-CLAY ROCK. "Aug. 21.--We passed the mouth of the Great Sioux River. Our Indian interpreter tells us that on the head waters of this river is the quarry of red rock of which the Indians make their pipes; and the necessity of procuring that article has introduced a law of nations, by which the banks of the stream are sacred; and even tribes at war meet without hostility at these quarries, which possess a right of asylum. Thus we find, even among savages, certain principles deemed sacred, by which the rigors of their merciless system of warfare are mitigated." CHAPTER III. THE SIOUX.