Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1861-03-23
MOUND BUILDERS.
aY L. VIRGINIA FRENCH

Central America, with its devastated cities
aud forest covered temples; the valley Of the
Mississippi, with gigantic mounds and tumuli
the slopes OF Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee, with
their remains Of ancient Notifications, their long
hidden cemeteries and relic holding caverns;
all bear indisputable record of this "New
Worlds" mighty and mysterious past. Who
we're the tenants Of those cities, who worehipped
In the dim light Of those temples, who fought
behind those broken bulwarks, who lie crum-
bling back to dust In those caves and cemeter.
lest Science, ingenuity, curiosity, have essay.
ed in vain to discover something of their names
and histories.
Eloquent as are those ruins, full of deep les
sons to the "sons Of men," crying ever as with
mighty voice from the depths Of the wilder
ness, wailing as it were over the buried and for
gotten grandeurs of the race who raised them,
yet they give back not even the faintest echo of
the name OF the "Eyasho," or ''people that are
lost " Not vestige OF their language, not QUE
mutilated ptge OF their history, hot even u
half whisper of the names OF their beautiful,
their bravest or their best; nothing but gray
fragments of ouce mighty fanes, oak-gro o
rulLs of buried cities, and century covered
tombs. 'G a SEQ
Drowned--drowned forever beneath Time q
rushiug river, with only here and there the
summit Of some lofty mound, the wall of some
old ruined city lifting up above the waves. to tell
us that they were and are not The mind, etung
oy the stimulus Of an undeveloped mystery,
goes reaching back, back into the unkuo va,
searching tor the old mound builders Of that
forgotten era, sinking at last In blankness aud
blackness, like the daring thoughts which we
send forth from time to time, seeking to compre
hend eternity or to fathom infnitude.
In vain our questioning. In vain we cry trho
and tchat were these mound buildePs7 Bore
they the pale forehead Of the Caucasian, the
red front of the Indian, or the dusky form of
the Mongolian2 Were they the tropic hearted
denlzens of the spice belts OF bloom and beauty
that grid the Equator7 Were they a remnant
of the "lost tribes" Of Gods chosen people?
or were they the antique mold Of the old Morse
heroes7 "How lived, how loved, how died'
they7 But the old green moundsin sunny wales,
or by the river shore, answer not-not mur-
mur comea up TO US Of their builders or their
buried ..-.s- Al .,.s1 4.
Turn we, then, from those Titanic tombs of
the lost to the mound builders Of ailater and
lovelier.day. To the high hearted and strong
handed heroes who have builded with their own
great deeds far nobler monumental mounds than
those which grace Virginis's Wales, or stand,
iOnR ellent bentlueisS On misbiselpptb bnOfee.--
To those who have reared themselves monu-
ments visible from every portion of our broad
land-whose heroic devotion, whose all-em.
bracing charity, orwhose deep souled nationali.
ty has fixed their memories like firm watch.
towers even upon the shifting sands Of Tine.
| To our revolutionary sires, whose mounds
were built Of living hearts, and cemented with
fresh, flowing blood. To men "born with the
| lions mettle and the oceans calm" whose
whole lives have been monumental, so that
even the homes where they once dselt loom up
like Titanic mounds; builded go as to capt their
shadow into every American heart; monnds like
Mount Vernon and Monticello, and Marshfield;
like Sunnyside, and the Hermitage, and Ash
land. The marble mausoleum OF Adrian may
have been fitting receptacle for imperial ash
%, YET we revere with deeper devotion the
small snow mound that shrouds the dust of
Franklin, and the green turf that lies upon the
heart of Kane, o'ershadowed as they are with
the insignia OF an immortal lame.
Grace Darling and Flora Mcdonald, each, by
one brave act, erected for herself memo.
rial purer and brighter far than Napoleon piled
through long yearsand with hecatombs Of men.
Herndon, who went down into the heart Of the
Atlantic, In that one hour built himself non,
Iument which no ocean can overwhelm, and
which shall exist when ".here shall be no more
sea."