Other indications, however, present analogies to the arrangements of cists and cinerary urns in ancient British tumuli, which suggest no less clearly the probability of human sacrifices, and a suttee self-immolation at the grave of the great chief, so congenial to the ideas of barbaric rank. Such cruel rites we know were practised among the Mexicans and Peruvians on the largest scale; wives, concubines, and attendants being immolated by the latter on the tomb of their deceased Inca, in some cases even to the number of thousands. The Grave Creek Mound, at the junction of Grave Creek with the Ohio river, in the State of Virginia, commands, on various accounts, a prominent distinction among the sepulchral monuments of America. It occupies a site on an extensive plain in connection with works now much obliterated; but its own gigantic proportions bid effectual defiance to the operations which are rapidly erasing less salient records of the ancient occupants of the soil. In the year 1838, when various circumstances combined to direct an unusual degree of attention to American antiquities, Mr. Tomlinson, the proprietor of the land, had it explored at considerable cost. A shaft sunk from the top, and a tunnel carried to the centre, disclosed two sepulchral chambers, one at the base, and another thirty feet above. They had been constructed, as in other cases, of logs, which had decayed, and permitted the superincumbent earth, with stones placed immediately over them, to fall upon the skeletons. In the upper chamber a single skeleton was found in an advanced state of decay, whilst the lower one contained two skeletons, one of which was believed to be that of a female. Beside these lay between three and four thousand shell beads, a number of ornaments of mica, several bracelets of copper, and sundry relics of stone carving, referred to, along with works of art from other ancient mounds, in a future chapter. But among them was included an inscribed stone disc, which constitutes one of the marvels of American antiquities. On reaching the lower vault, after removing its contents, it was determined to enlarge it into a convenient chamber for visitors, and in doing so ten more skeletons were discovered, all in a sitting posture, but in too fragile a state to admit of preservation. The position of these immediately around the sepulchral chamber, in the very centre of the mound, precludes all idea of subsequent interment, and scarcely admits of any other mode of accounting for their presence than that which the human sacrifices both of ancient and modern American obsequies suggest.