THE MOUND BUILDERS.

9

served as foundations for watch-towers and signal-stations. Still others bear evidence of having been used as places for worship and sacrifice. Figures of men and animals were often imitated in the shape of these mounds. One of them, in Adams County, Ohio, represents an enormous serpent which seems about to swallow an egg-shaped figure 164 feet long. One of the largest villages of the Mound Builders, near the present site of Marietta, Ohio, must have been the home of at least 5,000 people.

. 3. Wares from Ancient Workshops.-Knives, chisels, and axes, both of flint and copper, carved pipes, beads, bracelets, and vases of glazed earthenware are found in the burial-mounds, and all are of finer workmanship than any thing made by the Indians of the coast. When Frenchmen first visited the Mississippi Valley, the homes of the Mound Builders had been deserted for hundreds of years, if we judge from the age of forest-trees which were growing upon the summit of their earth-works; and the relics which the mounds contained were as much a mystery to the savage natives as they are to us.

4. The Indians knew nothing of their history earlier than the memory of their oldest living men. Perhaps the Mound. Builders had been conquered and exterminated by the ancestors of those Indians themselves; perhaps the struggle for

existence in so cold a climate was too hard for them, and they returned to the warmer regions of Mexico and Central America, whence they had come; but these are only guesses: the beginning and the end of their history are equally unknown to us.

5. Whence came the early inhabitants of America? is a question that can not be positively answered. A tradition still preserved in China, says that a company of sailors, driven off shore by westerly winds, sailed many weeks until they came to a great continent where grew the aloe and other plants that were strange to them, but which we recognize as natives of Mexico. Even within the last hundred years, fifteen vessels have been driven across the Pacific to our western shores; and during all the previous ages we may believe that many similar accidents had occurred. Doubtless, also, Greek and Phœnician sailors may have crossed the narrower and more stormy Atlantic; but if they reached this continent, they never returned to tell their story. The first white visitors of America, of whom we have any trustworthy record, came from Iceland.

6. Northmen in Greenland.-Iceland, that island of frost and flame, had been occupied about a hundred years by a hardy, sea-faring race from Norway, when, in A. D. 985, Eric the Red, an Icelandic chief, discovered Greenland, and planted a colony of his countrymen on its south-west shore. This settlement grew prosperous through its trade with the Esquimaux, and paid 2,600 pounds of walrus-teeth for a yearly tribute to the Pope. One of Eric's comrades, driven out of his way by adverse winds, descried the mainland of NORTH AMERICA stretching far away to the south-west.

7. Leif in New England.-In A. D. 1000, Eric's son, Leif the Fortunate, undertook, with thirty-five brave companions, to examine this more fertile and attractive shore. They saw the flat rocks of Newfoundland, the white banks

THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.

II

of Nova Scotia, and the long sandy beach of Cape Cod. From its abundance of wild grapes, the Rhode Island coast was called Good Vinland. Leif's party wintered in New England, and in the spring carried home news of their great discovery.

8. "White-man's land."-Subsequent parties of Icelanders are supposed to have visited the shores of what are now South Carolina and Georgia. The northern natives had told them of a "white-man's land" to the southward, where fair-faced processions marched in white robes, with banners

at their heads, to the music of hymns. Though they never found this abode of pale-faces, the Northmen named it by anticipation, Great Ireland; and some wise men believe that Irish fishermen had indeed arrived on this continent.

A. D. 1007.

9. Thorfinn Karlsefne, a famous sea-king, reconnoitered the bays and harbors of the New England coast. Icelandic settlements were made, and a brisk trade was carried on with the natives, who were glad to exchange their furs for bright-colored cloth, knives, and trinkets. At least one little Northman was born on the American continent. His name was Snorri, and from him, in our day, the great sculptor, Thorwaldsen, and the learned philologist, Finn Magnusson, traced their descent.

10. In time, however, the people of Iceland ceased to hear from their brethren in America. The settlers, if any remained alive, became so mingled with the previous inhabitants that, when white men came again, their descendants were not to be distinguished from other barbarians on the

coast.

Point out on Map No. 1, Iceland. Greenland. The route of the Northmen. The Mississippi Valley. The Great Lakes.

Read Baldwin's "Ancient America;" Squier and Davis's "American Antiquities " and "Discoveries in the West." L. H. Morgan's "Ancient Society," Part II., Chapter vii; his article in the "North American Review" for 1876, and one in "Johnson's Cyclopædia" on the Architecture of the American Aborigines; "Leland's "Fusang;" Sinding's "History of Scandinavia;" Beamish's “ Discovery of America by the Northmen."

CHAPTER II.

PHYSICAL FEATURES AND EARLY INHABITANTS.

II. While North America is again hidden from the rest of the world, let us take a view of the lonely continent and its savage people, learning if we can what is its fitness for a home of civilized men. As before, for the sake of clearness, we shall use names which were given by white explorers long after the time of which we write.

12. Two great mountain systems form the rocky framework of the continent. The eastern or Appalachian system, extending in a direction nearly parallel with the Atlantic coast, is divided by several river-valleys into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Vermont, the Adirondacks of New York, the Alleghanies of Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Mountains of the southern states. The gentle slope and frequent divisions of these mountains permit the navigation of many rivers far from the sea; and the two thousand miles of coast which now form the eastern and part of the southern limit of the United States, are broken by bays, inlets, and fine harbors large enough to shelter the shipping of all the world.

13. The Cordilleras of the western part of the continent form a grand mountain-system 1,100 miles across at its greatest width, consisting of elevated table-lands cut by narrow cañons and bounded by still higher ridges and peaks. The Coast Range descends abruptly to the Pacific, and its westward-flowing rivers are short and rapid. It is broken in the north by the gorges, or dalles, of Columbia River, and farther south by San Francisco Bay, which extends so far