able, with senses all alert, battling there with physical obstacles which men like myself had brought together for my undoing. The Eternal could never have willed this thing! I could not and I would not perish thus. And I grew strong in insolence of self-trust; and I laughed aloud as I dashed the sluggish water from side to side.

"Then came an emotion of pity for myself,-of wild, wild regret; of sorrow, oh, infinite, for a fate so desolate, a doom so dreary, so heart-sickening. You may laugh at the contradiction if you will, sir, but I felt that I could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem another fellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to be separating; while one in parting grieved over the deplorable fate of the other.

"And then I prayed!

It was not

The days of

"I prayed, why or wherefore I know not. from fear. It could not have been in hope. miracles are past, and there was no natural law by whose providential interposition I could be saved. I did not pray it prayed of itself, my soul within me.

"Was the calmness that I now felt, torpidity?—the torpidity that precedes dissolution to the strong swimmer who, sinking from exhaustion, must at last add a bubble to the wave as he suffocates beneath the element which now denied his mastery? If it were so, how fortunate was it that my floating rod at that moment attracted my attention as it dashed through the water by me! I saw on the instant that a fish had entangled himself in the wire noose. The rod quivered, plunged, came again to the surface, and rippled the water as it shot in arrowy flight from side to side of the tank. At last, driven towards the southeast corner of the reservoir, the small end seemed to have got foul somewhere. The brazen

butt, which, every time the fish sounded, was thrown up to the moon, now sank by its own weight, showing that the other end must be fast. But the cornered fish, evidently anchored somewhere by that short wire, floundered several times to the surface before I thought of striking out to the spot.

"The water is low now, and tolerably clear. You may see the very ledge there, sir, in yonder corner, on which the small end of my rod rested when I secured that pike with my hands. I did not take him from the slip-noose, however, but, standing upon the ledge, handled the rod in a workmanlike manner, as I flung that pound pickerel over the iron railing upon the top of the parapet. The rod, as I have told you, barely reached from the railing to the water. It was a heavy, strong bass rod which I had borrowed in the 'Spirit of the Times' office; and when I discovered that the fish at the end of the wire made a strong enough knot to prevent me from drawing my tackle away from the railing around which it twined itself as I threw, why, as you can at once see, I had but little difficulty in making my way up the face of the wall with such assistance. The ladder which attracted your notice is, as you see, lashed to the iron railing in the identical spot where I thus made my escape; and for fear of similar accidents they have placed another one in the corresponding corner of the other compartment of the tank ever since my remarkable night's adventure in the reservoir."

We give the above singular relation verbatim as heard from the lips of our chance acquaintance, and, although strongly tempted to "work it up" after the fantastic style of a famous German namesake, prefer that the reader should have it in its American simplicity.

THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

ANONYMOUS.

[It is very desirable that, to the extracts we have given descriptive of American scenery, and of interesting points in modern American history, some brief account of the aboriginal civilization of this country should be appended,—that known as the civilization of "The MoundBuilders." It was not, indeed, a civilization in the modern sense, but only as compared with the savagery found to exist among the Indians of the Northern States. There is abundant evidence that at one time a much more cultivated people occupied this region. This people had vanished ere the discovery of America by the whites. Yet plentiful indications of their former existence persist, and the study of these, and of their far-reaching relations, has given rise to what is almost a complete branch of science, that of American archæology. Many able writers have treated this subject, but somewhat too technically for our present purpose, and we transcribe instead a portion of an article on "The Mound-Builders" from the "American Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica," in which the subject is handled more briefly and generally. We omit most of the descriptive portions of this article, but give its historical and theoretical portions in full.]

THE pioneer settlers of the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio failed to discover indications of any human culture in these regions beyond that of the savage tribes. with whom they contended for the possession of their new territory. Only when men with aptitude for scientific research made their way thither was it discovered that this whole region was thickly covered with the relics of a more ancient and more civilized race, who had apparently been completely supplanted by the modern Indians. The most apparent of these relics consisted of mounds of earth, varying greatly in shape, size, and probable purpose. This fact, while of interest, was not in itself par ticularly striking. Earth mounds are found in all parts

of the world, and seem to have been a general means adopted by savage and barbarous tribes for the burial and the commemoration of their leading men. But the mounds of the United States are by no means confined to purposes of burial, like those of Asia and of other regions, but are of greatly-varied design, and in many of their forms have no counterpart elsewhere upon the earth. While many of them are sepulchral, others are evidently defensive, others religious, and of many the design is, and perhaps will always remain, mysterious. They exist, moreover, in extraordinary abundance, being found throughout the whole region from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and to some small extent beyond these limits. The State of Ohio alone contains more than ten thousand mounds, besides one thousand or fifteen hundred defensive works and enclosures. They are also very abundant in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. It is said that within a radius of fifty miles from the mouth of the Illinois River, in the State of Illinois, about five thousand of these ancient works exist. They existed so abundantly on the site of St. Louis as to gain for that city the name of the "Mound City." If we go south it is to find them in similar abundance. The Gulf States are full of them. From Florida to Texas they everywhere abound of the greatest diversity in size and shape. Nor are they restricted to the limits here given. Occasional small examples exist east of the Alleghanies. West of the Rocky Mountains, and throughout Mexico and Central America, they are found, though nowhere so abundantly as in the Mississippi Valley. These mounds are usually from six to thirty feet high, and forty to one hundred in diameter, though some are much larger. To the vanished race to whose labor they are due has been given the name of the "Mound-Builders."

[We have not space to give in full the extended description of these mounds which follows, and must very briefly epitomize it. Many of them consist of defensive earthworks, situated usually on hills and river-bluffs, and indicating an extensive population in the valleys below. There are indications of a continuous line of such fortifications extending from Western New York into Ohio, while many isolated ones exist, often of great extent and showing much military skill in their erection.

Other works are extensive enclosures on the valley levels, forming very regular circles, squares, and other figures, and containing mounds supposed to have been used for religious purposes. Of the so-called Temple mounds" some are of enormous size, that at Cahokia, Illinois, measuring seven hundred by five hundred feet at base, and ninety feet in perpendicular height. It was probably surmounted by a temple. Other small mounds are supposed to have been used as altars; but the most numerous class were used for burial, and in these skeletons are often found. Perhaps the strangest mounds are those imitating the shape of animals, which are found numerously in Wisconsin, and to some extent elsewhere. These are large and crude representations of a considerable variety of animals, the "Snake mound" of Ohio being seven hundred feet in length.

The mounds contain very numerous relics of the art of their builders, consisting of many articles of pottery, stone pipes of very skilful manufacture, in imitation of animal forms, stone implements in great variety, articles of beaten copper, pearls, plates of mica, fragments of woven fabrics, and other articles, indicative of much industry and a considerable advance in the simpler arts. With this digest we may permit our author to resume his narrative.]

The question now arises, Who were the Mound-Builders? What vestiges of their history, if any, yet exist? These are questions which archeologists are not prepared to answer definitely, though they seem approaching a settled conclusion. Much study has been given to the skulls taken from the mounds, in quest of rare characteristics. They vary considerably, but there is nothing to indicate an essential difference in race from modern Indians. And the arts of the Mound-Builders have not quite died out in