A few years ago, in digging down a hill near the town of Fall River, Massachusetts, a mass of earth slid off uncovering a human skull which was found to belong to a human skeleton buried in a sitting posture. When the covering was removed, the astonished workman saw that the trunk of the skeleton was encased in a breastplate of brass. This breast plate was oval in form, about thirteen inches long, ten in width and nearly one-fourth of an inch in thickness. Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a half inches in length and one-fourth of an inch in diameter. The poet, Longfellow, has written a poem on this subject with which, no doubt, many of our readers are familiar. The poem commences: "Speak, speak thou fearful guest, Who, with thy hollow breast. Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me." {110} Not far distant, on the bank of the Taunton river, is the celebrated Dighton Rock, a huge piece of fine-grained granite covered with sculptures and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Both the skeleton and the inscriptions on the rock seem to be of Asiatic origin. The armor is the same as appears in drawings taken from the sculptures found at Palanque, Mexico. [Image: Ancient Tower at Newport.] Not far from Newport, in the state of Rhode Island, near the sea shore, is a strange tower, which may have been the base for a beacon or light-house. At Marietta, Ohio, are ancient works that cover an area about three-fourths of a mile long, and half a mile broad. But {111} the most intricate, and perhaps the most extensive, are those in the Licking Valley, near Newark, Ohio, extending over an area of two square miles. These mounds are evidently the remains of ancient fortifications, as they are invariably situated on a commanding eminence, or by the side of a stream. Many of these mounds have been found to contain skeletons; and the appearance of the bones would seem to point to an antiquity of more than a thousand years. Curious pottery, known as "coil-made pottery," has been found in the mounds and caves, and at the ruined "pueblos," or ancient villages, in Utah. These vessels seem to have been formed without the aid of a potter's wheel, by coiling bands of clay upon themselves.