Others, in the form of rabbits, badgers, bears, and birds; others, of unknown monstrous animals. We examined in all thirty-nine mounds; and in one, at the very base, on the floor of the natural earth upon which the mound was built (the soil of the mound being, as I said, always of a different character to the surrounding soil) we discovered and carried away with us the perfect skeleton of a man, with a few arrow heads made of flint, and a tobacco pipe, made also of stone, with a very small and narrow bowl, having a device on it like some of the hieroglyphic monsters of Egypt or old India. In twelve we found skeletons, male and female, of the present race of Indians, with their bows and arrows, or, as was the case in four instances, their rifles and knives and tobacco pipes; some of these last elaborately carved in red stone. In Iowa we dug into a large mound, and discovered fragments of an ancient pottery, with the colors burned into the material, and various bones and skulls, arrow heads, and a flint knife, and saw. We saw the painted rocks, also, on the Mississippi shores, near Prairie du Chien--said to be of an immemorial age--and the questions, Who was this old mound builder--whence did he come--when did he vanish from this continent? have haunted me ever since. That he was the primitive man of this planet, I think there is good reason to believe. Go where we will, to what portion soever of the earth, we shall find these mound evidences of his existence. In Asia, Europe, Africa, and all along the backbone of the American continent, he has established his record. Yet no one knows anything about him: all tradition even of him and of his works is lost. When Watkinson started from the middle of Asia to visit the newly acquired country of Russia--the beautiful, fruitful, invaluable country of the Amoor--he was confronted at the very outset by a cluster of seven of these very mounds, and his book, from that time forth, extending over thousands of miles, is full of descriptions of these unknown earthworks. I have no doubt they mark the progressive geographical movements of a race of men who came from Asia. From Behring's Strait to the Gulf they can easily be traced. But I have said enough, and will stop here. THE MOUND BUILDER.