exploration of a mound in Lee County, Virginia. Grave Creek Mound, situated twelve miles below Wheeling in West Virginia, is the Monster work of the Ohio Valley. It measures seventy feet in height and nine hundred feet in circumference. Its form is that of a truncated cone, the flattened area on the top being fifty feet in diameter.[39] The States of Indiana[40] and Illinois formed with Ohio a portion of the great centre of the Mound-builder country, as the remains found on the watercourses of both States testify. The valleys of the Wabash, Kankakee, Illinois and Saline Rivers were the once populous dwelling-places of a thrifty and industrious people who have left thousands of structures behind them.[41] The Alleghany Mountains, the natural limit of the great Mississippi basin, appears to have served as the eastern and south-eastern boundary of the Mound-builder country. In Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and in all of Kentucky and Tennessee, their remains are numerous and in some instances imposing. In Tennessee especially, the works of the Mound-builders are of the most interesting character. Prof. Joseph Jones, of the University of New Orleans, has by his thorough and recent explorations under the patronage of the Smithsonian Institution, brought to light very interesting materials for the study of the history of this people. The works of defence in the shape of stone forts, by some thought to be peculiar to New York and the lake boundaries, with occasional exceptions in the Ohio Valley, have been found to abound in Coffee and other counties. One very perfect example of this kind of fortification, but very imperfectly described and figured by Haywood,[42] is that known as the stone fort near Manchester, Tenn. This enclosure, containing over fifty-four acres, has been minutely described by Prof. Jones.[43] In the accompanying cut the reader will obtain a pretty clear idea of the form of this fort. The wall, which varies from four to ten feet in height, is composed of loose rocks gathered apparently from the bed of the streams below, and the vicinity. The ditch shown in the cut at the rear of the works was probably designed to convey water from one creek to the other. The entrance is quite complicated and constitutes the most remarkable feature of the fortification. [Illustration: Pendants and Sinkers. (Nat. Mus.) Surface Finds.] [Illustration: STONE FORT.]