those represented on Plate XV. By invitation, we took up our quarters at the house of Mr. Isaac Bailey, where it was once proposed to build a village or city, to be called Crawfordsville. The city was never built, and the name is only remembered by a few of the oldest inhabitants. This is the place mentioned by Mr. R. C. Taylor1 as stated in the western papers to contain a group of mounds resembling lizards, alligators, and flying dragons.
On Plate XVI, I have endeavored to represent these monsters as they appear upon careful survey and plotting. They occupy ground sloping gently towards the river at the north and northwest, their heads pointing up hill, and their general course southwesterly. The winged mounds or dragons (three in number) appear to lead the flight or march of the other animals, and to be heralded by a host of simple oblong figures, extending nearly half a mile in the same direction. An enlarged view of one of the winged mounds is shown on Plate XVII. No. 1; and the group of oblong mounds, forming the advance guard, is shown on Plate XIV, No.2.
The main figure in the general group is shown on an enlarged scale (Plate XVII. No. 2), and is two hundred and eighty-six feet in length. This and the one immediately preceding it are good representatives of the kind called lizards; while the two exterior figures, having four projections or feet, are always called turtles by the most casual observer. One at the right appears to have been intended for a lizard, but is without the tail. These are from two to six feet in height.
A little north of the mounds represented on Plate XVI. is a very large one, ten feet in perpendicular height, and eighty feet in diameter at the base. Its situation is such as to command a view of the valley for two or three miles both above and below. It had been opened prior to our visit, but without important results. It has an appendage consisting of a slight ridge of earth, sixty feet long, extending from its base in a northeasterly direction. Immediately north of it is an excavation from one to two feet in depth. The earth taken from this excavation, however, would make but a small part of the large mound. South of these the ground continues to rise to a high ridge, occupied by the roads, as shown on the map, Plate XV.
As seen by the plate, many of these mounds are in a grove of timber, and have not been disturbed by cultivation. It is very much to be hoped that the good taste of the present intelligent proprietor will induce him to preserve them from destruction. This locality was doubtless one of much importance to the original inhabitants. It is protected on three sides by the marshy grounds along the margin of the river; and on the heights in the rear are several mounds, indicat- [page 26:] ing that outposts may have been guarded, so as to give warning of the first approach of an enemy.
It has been observed that among the figures represented on Plate XVI. is a lizard without a tail; and we found, on the high ground immediately south of the little village of Big Bend, two, which may be considered as turtles, with a similar deficiency. (Plate XVII, No. 3.) They closely resemble the forms described by Mr. S. Taylor.1
One of these (on the east side of the river) is apparently a group of two large and four small mounds united into one (Plate XVII. No. 4) or we may suppose the two largest united by a ridge, and the four smaller ones placed adjoining them. In each of these figures one end is larger than the other; thus indicating which was the head of the turtle. One is sixty-five feet long, and sixty-seven feet broad, measured from the extremities of the anterior projections; the other is one hundred and four feet long, and eighty-two feet broad. One, it will be observed, lies nearly north and south, and the other nearly east and west. The most southerly is the largest. May they not have been the depositories of the remains of some distinguished family, consisting of the man, his wife, and four children? We may suppose that each had a mound erected suitable in its dimensions and relative 