burden of human hopes and fears, have sped away into the past,
since 'Hundred-gated Thebes' sheltered her teeming population,
where now are but a mournful group of ruins. Yet today, far
below the remorseless sands of her desert, we find the rude
flint-flakes that require us to carry back the time of man's
first appearance in Egypt to a past so remote that her stately
ruins become a thing of yesterday in comparison to them."
(footnote Von Hellwald: Smithsonian Report, 1836.)

Europe, in the minds of some travelers, seems to have a monopoly
on all fair landscapes and ancient civilization, to hear their
overdrawn descriptions gleaned from many books of travel. But,
in the socalled New World we find mysterious mounds and gigantic
earthworks, also deserted mines, where we can trace the sites of
ancient camps and fortifications, showing that the Indians of
America's unbounded primeval forests and vast flowery prairies
were intruders on an earlier, fairer civilization. Here we find
evidence of a teeming population. No one viewing the imposing
ruins scattered about the Mississippi valley and especially the
wonderful work of Fort Ancient can help but marvel at these
crumbling walls of an ancient, forgotten race.

One writer has stated that America has no hoary legends or
traditions that lend an ever-increasing interest to the scenes
of other lands. It will never have any ancient history, nor any
old institutions. This writer surely never stood on those
ancient mounds of Ohio and elsewhere which tell us that there
were people here ten thousand years ago, when the glaciers began
to melt and the land became inhabitable once more. "Even before
the ice came creeping southwestwardly from the region of Niagara