It is indeed a vague and partial glimpse that we recover of the old worshipper, with his strange rites, his buried arts, and the traces of his propitiatory sacrifices. But slight as it is, it reveals a condition of things diverse in many respects from all else that we know of the former history of the New World; and on that account, therefore, its most imperfect disclosures have an interest for us greater than any discoveries relating to the modern Indian can possess. Still more is that interest confirmed by every indication which seems to present the ancient Mound-Builders as in some respects a link between the rude tribes of the American forests and prairies, and those nations whom the first Europeans found established in cities, under a well-ordered government, and surrounded by many appliances of civilisation akin to those with which they had been long familiar among ancient nations of southern Asia. To the great centres of native progress still manifest in the ruined memorials of extinct arts in Central America, and illustrated by so many evidences of national development attained under Aztec and Inca rule, attention must be directed with a view to comprehend whatever was essentially native to the New World. But before turning southward to those seats of a well-ascertained native civilisation, there still remains for consideration one other class of earthworks of a very peculiar character. The mineral regions from whence the Mound-Builders derived their stores of copper have been described; but between them and the populous valleys of the Ohio, an extensive region intervenes, abounding in monuments no less remarkable than some of those already referred to; and valuable as a possible link in the detached fragments of such ancient chroniclings. Lying as they do in geographical, and perhaps also in other relations, immediately between the old regions of the Mound-Builders and the Miners of ante-Columbian centuries, they cannot be overlooked in any archæological researches into the history of the New World. ----- [88] _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, p. 157. CHAPTER XIII. SYMBOLIC MOUNDS. THE WISCONSIN REGION—ANIMAL MOUNDS—SYMBOLIC MOUNDS—BIG ELEPHANT MOUND—DADE COUNTY MOUNDS—MAGNITUDE OF EARTHWORKS—ENCLOSED WORKS OF ART—ROCK RIVER WORKS—THE NORTHERN AZTALAN—ANCIENT GARDEN BEDS—THE WISCONSIN PLAINS—A SACRED NEUTRAL LAND—THE ALLIGATOR MOUND—THE GREAT SERPENT, OHIO—SERPENT SYMBOLS— INTAGLIO EARTHWORKS—SUGGESTIVE INFERENCES—THE ANCIENT RACE—A SACERDOTAL CASTE—ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE—INFERIORITY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES.