By remains of art I do not so much refer
to those desolate palaces which crumble forgotten in the gloom of
tropical woods, nor even the enormous earthworks of the Mississippi
valley covered with the mould of generations of forest trees, but rather
to the humbler and less deceptive relics of his kitchens and his hunts.
On the Atlantic coast one often sees the refuse of Indian villages,
where generation after generation have passed their summers in fishing,
and left the bones, shells, and charcoal as their only epitaph. How many
such summers would it require for one or two hundred people to thus
gradually accumulate a mound of offal eight or ten feet high and a
hundred yards across, as is common enough? How many generations to heap
up that at the mouth of the Altamaha River, examined and pronounced
exclusively of this origin by Sir Charles Lyell,[36-1] which is about
this height, and covers ten acres of ground? Those who, like myself,
have tramped over many a ploughed field in search of arrow-heads must
have sometimes been amazed at the numbers which are sown over the face
of our country, betokening a most prolonged possession of the soil by
their makers.
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