ture which accompany the human remains, as well as by the good state of preservation of the remains themselves. The probability is that the present race of Indians, who know nothing of the origin or objects of the mounds, have used them, to save themselves labor, for the burial of their dead.

The inquiry will naturally be made, for what object were such altars as have been described, constructed and afterwards covered with a great depth of earth. And as it is known that burial by incremation was in use among the Mexicans, may not these altars have been intended for that purpose. May not the enclosures have been cemeteries of some distinguished family of warriors or priests; while the common people simply interred their dead with less expense of labor, wherever convenience might dictate.

Our authors meet the conjecture that mounds of this description were burial places, by asserting that the greater number have no traces of human remains upon or around the altars; and the bones actually found on some of the altars they ascribe to human victims, which the mound builders, like the inhabitants of Mexico and Yucatan, may have sacrificed. But if we were to oppose conjecture to conjecture, we might suggest that the mounds where there are no human remains, are the cenotaphs of warriors slain among enemies, whose corpses could not be recovered. With regard to the other relics found on the altars, our authors remark that they are usually homogeneous: "that is to say, instead of finding a large variety of relics, ornaments, weapons and other articles, such as go to make up the possessions of a barbarian dignitary, we find upon one altar pipes only, upon another a simple mass of galena, whilst the next one has a quantity of pottery or a collection of spearheads, or else is destitute of remains, except perhaps a thin layer of carbonaceous material. Such could not possibly be the case upon the above hypothesis [that is if these altars were places of burning the dead], for the spear, the arrows, the pipe, and the other implements and personal ornaments of the dead would then be found in connection with each other." This proceeds upon the assumption that the customs of the mound-builders were just the same as those of the extant Indians, which is a point to be ascertained from their monuments. And the strangeness of the fact that an altar used for sacrifice should afterwards be most carefully covered with a depth of earth, is so great, that we confess ourselves to remain in entire doubt as to the object which these particular mounds were intended to serve.

Mounds of sepulture occur in vast numbers at a distance from the sacred enclosures, either in groups or isolated; and, when opened, reveal their purpose. Out of a hundred mounds explored by our authors, twenty had a sepulchral character. They

rarely contain more than one skeleton. This with personal ornaments, utensils or weapons, is found buried beneath the apex at the original surface of the ground, sometimes in enclosures of timber or of stone, forming a rude coffin. In every instance but one, the skeletons and skulls are so decayed as to render restoration impossible; in that instance, the skull, preserved by some peculiar quality of the soil, proved to belong to the American type of skulls, but to excel nearly all known specimens, in its dimensions and facial angle. These mounds, as well as the altar mounds, have been disturbed by later burials near the surface. It is worthy of remark that layers of charcoal have been found in these sepulchers, as though a burning piece of wood had been suddenly thrown into the heaped up earth. This fact is interpreted by our authors as indicating that sacrifices for the dead, or funeral rites of some description, were celebrated before the mound was completed. The skeletons themselves, in such cases, have not been subjected to the action of fire. Burial by fire, however, our authors pronounce to have been frequently practised by the mound builders. Burial in urns without burning, or the practice of putting the bones into earthen vessels after the decomposition of the flesh, which has been traced among the Southern Indians, is not known to have existed in Ohio.

One of the largest sepulchral mounds is that at Grave Creek near Wheeling, which has often been described and was excavated in 1838. It is seventy feet high, and measures one thousand feet around the base. It was found to include two sepulchral chambers, one at the base containing two skeletons, and another thirty feet above containing one. Besides a great number of personal decorations, this mound is said to have revealed a small flat stone a few inches in diameter, having a number of characters cut upon it which bear a striking resemblance to the alphabetical signs of several nations. As this is the only trace of an alphabet to be found on this continent before the arrival of Europeans, it of course has furnished copious matter of speculation to the Danish antiquaries and to our own. We agree with our authors in suspecting that these characters have not been sculptured many

years.

The structures referred in the work before us to the class of temple mounds, are of rare occurrence in the region more particularly explored by our authors. They are distinguished by regular forms, large dimensions and neighborhood to the enclosures heretofore described, and adopt principally the form of a truncated pyramid with a graded path to the top. A mound of this class at Portsmouth near the mouth of the Scioto is circular, surrounded by a terrace, and has a spiral passage leading to its flat summit. Works of this description become larger and of more frequent occurrence in the states south of the Ohio, and by their

terraces and great size, seem to indicate a relationship between the tribes of the great valley and the builders of the Teocallis of Mexico. A very remarkable one, north of the Ohio, occurring at Cahokia, Illinois, is a parallelogram seven hundred feet long by five hundred feet wide at the base, and ninety feet high.

Among the mounds of an anomalous character, enumerated by our authors, may be mentioned several which are chiefly composed of ashes, charcoal and bits of burnt bone and burnt stone. Others are called mounds of observation, from the position which they occupy on the tops of the highest hills, where they may have served as stations for sentinels, or for signal fires; but as they contain human bones and have not been sufficiently explored, nothing definite can be pronounced concerning them.

We pass on to the remains of art in the shape of utensils and implements, personal ornaments and sculptures, the discovery of which in the mounds may be said to have been the principal reward of the labors of Messrs. Squier and Davis. Indeed they have introduced a new era in the knowledge of Indian art, and greatly raised the estimate which must be formed of the imitative skill of the dwellers in the great valley. We refer not so much to the vessels and occasional ornaments of pottery, which are nearly equaled as works of art by others picked up in more southern parts of our Union, or to the implements of metal hammered into shape without the use of fire, or to the rings and other metallic ornaments; as to the sculptured imitations in stone, occurring in great numbers, of animals still to be met with in the neighborhood of the Indian works. In one of the mounds of 'Mound City' our authors found a hundred representations of animals, besides four of the human head,-one of which they pronounce to be unsurpassed by any specimen of ancient American art, which has fallen under their notice. About thirty species of birds, represented with great accuracy and spirit, are among these remains. But the most remarkable sculpture is that of the sea-cow, of which our authors have obtained from the mounds seven specimens, and which is not known to live to the north of the rivers of Florida.

This fact might lead one to conjecture that these works of art were executed further to the south, and passed north ward by barter. But the occurrence of representations of birds still inhabiting the Ohio valley, and executed in the same style, was against such a conjecture. Other circumstances show that a brisk trade in objects valued for their beauty or use, must have been kept up among the tribes of North America. The shells and pearls of the sea-coast, and the teeth of the shark, adorned the persons of the mound-builders. The copper from Lake Superior, remarkable for the accompaniment of silver, formed their metallic implements, while galena in its unreduced state may have come from a nearer locality. Plates of mica are abundant in and about the

mounds, although no original locality is known to exist in Ohio. Weapons and implements of obsidian, found in five mounds upon the Scioto, were probably brought in the worked or in the rude. state from Mexico, as no nearer deposit has been discovered. The porphyry out of which pipes and many representations of animals are sculptured, is traced by our authors to a locality on the Missouri. It is a stone of great hardness, but the skill of the workmen has contrived to subdue it into shape by cutting the surface with some sharp instrument.

The age of the works which they have examined, forms the subject of our authors' short concluding chapter. Several circumstances lead us back to quite a remote period, as the lowest date to which they can be assigned. In the first place, while the skeletons which have broken the strata of the mounds called sacred, are accompanied by crosses and other articles of European manufacture, nothing of that kind has been detected, pertaining to the era when the mounds were built. In the second place, none of the monuments are erected on the lower terraces next to the present beds of the streams, from which we may perhaps argue that these terraces have been formed since their erection. Then, again, the rivers in shifting their channels have in some instances encroached upon the superior terraces, so as in part to destroy works situated upon them, and afterwards receded to long distances of a fourth or half a mile or upwards,' for all which a period of many years seems to be required. Of the decayed condition of the skeletons, in all save a single instance, we have already spoken. Finally the trees growing upon the works, by their annual rings, lay claim to an age of from six to eight hundred years. And this is the lowest limit to which the antiquity of the works can be brought down.

We can not close this article, without again expressing our sense of the very business-like way in which our authors have gone to their work, by following up surveys, far surpassing the old ones in accuracy, with laborious excavations in search of what lay hid beneath the ground. The results of their labors ought to reach more eyes than will fall upon an expensive book like the quarto before us. We would suggest to them whether a small cheap volume comprising the essential parts of the present one, would not be acceptable to many readers, particularly at the west, and might not be the source of profit to themselves. And we could wish also that they might have the means of carrying their explorations on an extensive scale into the states south of the Ohio. A small annual appropriation by Congress, or by the Smithsonian Institution, for the purpose of rescuing from destruction the remains of ancient American art, which have not already passed away-if judiciously used to stimulate the labors of such men as Messrs. Squier and Davis-would in a few years bring together a

comparative museum of antiquities, from which many valuable conclusions would undoubtedly be drawn. The vast Museo

Borbonico at Naples, derives its chief value from the painted vases found in Magna Græcia, and from the wall-pictures, mosaics and statues of Pompeii and Herculaneum. If these remains, obtained within the country, had been distributed through the museums of Europe, and if the curiosities which the museum possessed had told the story only of foreign lands-how much would have been said of the listlessness and want of national feeling shown by the Neapolitan government. Even so it will be a shame, if the American monuments instead of being collected into a museum at Washington, go into private collections or are bought up for foreign countries.

ART. VIII.-CONGREGATIONALISM: ITS HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES.

Congregationalism: Its Principles and Influences: a Discourse delivered before the General Association of New York, at their meeting in Madison, August, 1848; by RICHARD S. STORRS, Jr., Pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1848. pp. 72. The Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in New England, in 1620 reprinted from the original volume, with Historical and Local Illustrations of Providences, Principles, and Persons; by GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D. New York: John Wiley. pp. 369.

In all our reading on the subject of Congregationalism—which has extended to nearly every standard treatise published in this country or in Great Britain for two centuries past-we do not remember to have met with what we could accept as a complete definition of the term or system. Writers have sought to trace the history of its development, or to state and defend its principles, rather than to define with logical exactness the system itself. This has been owing partly to the fact that the system is one of principles, and not of forms and rules. It was not created by legislation; it was not adopted in convention; it was evolved by devout and studious minds from the New Testament, which has been considered its text-book. The principles of Congregationalism were gradually developed by the Puritans, in their opposi

The organization of the Smithsonian Institution contemplates appropriations for this purpose.