These ancient fortifications, which are very numerous in that vicinity, some of wliich
enclose a gpreat many acres, and being built on the banks of the rivers, with walls in some
places twenty or thirty feet in height, with covered ways to the water, evince a knowledge
of the science of fortifications, apparently not a century behind that of the present day,
were evidently never built by any nation of savages in America, and present to us
incontestable proof of the former existence of a people very far advanced in the arts of
civilization, who have, from some cause or other, disappeared, and left these imperishable
proofs of their former existence.
