It mast have been indeed a great work for people who had neither metallic tools nor domestic animals to have erected such a great mound. The earth for its construction was probably scraped from the surface and carried to the mound in baskets. A people who could erect such a monument as this, with such scanty means at their command, must have possessed those qualities which would sooner or later have brought them civilization. Charles Dickens, when visiting America, gives this impression that the Big Grave made upon him "...the host of Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder--so old that mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck their roots into the earth, and so high that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted around it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here in their blessed ignorance of white existence hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound, and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek." Standing here in this lovely region, chosen by a vanished race as their last resting place, we recalled the words of an Ohio poet: "Lonely and sad it stands The trace of ruthless hands Is on its sides and summit, and around, The dwellings of the white man pile the ground, And curling in the air, The smoke of thrice a thousand hearths is there: Without, all speaks of life; within, Deaf to the city's echoing din, Sleep well the tenants of that silent Mound, Their names forgot, their memories unrenown'd. Upon its top I tread, And see around me spread Temples and mansions, and the hoary hills, Bleak with the labor that the coffer fills, But mars their bloom the while, And steals from nature's face its joyous smile: And here and there, below, The stream's meandering flow Breaks on the view; and westward in the sky The gorgeous clouds in crimson masses lie. The hammer's clang rings out, Where late the Indian's shout Startled the wild fowl from its sedgy nest, And broke the wild deer's and the panther's rest. The lordly oaks went down Before the ax--the canebrake is a town: The bark canoe no more Glides noiseless from the shore; And, sole memorial of a nation's doom, Amid the works of art rises this lonely tomb. --Chas. A. Jones. It is a well known fact that these ancient people chose the most fertile spots along river bottoms for their settlements. The Cahokia Mound is such a stupendous example of the work of the Mound Builders that it well deserves mention here. It is located in one of the most fertile sections in Illinois. It is well watered, and not often overflowed by the Mississippi. It is such a fertile and valuable tract that it has received the name of the "Great American Bottom."