Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser

ANTIQUITIES.

We have been politely furnished with the following description of some of the numerous evidences this state in common with the whole western country, affords of its having been formerly inhabited by a set of people unknown to historians.

On the quarter section of land which a Mr. Torrant occupies in Jones's Valley, (Alabama) is a regular circular entrenchment, enclosing about six acres of land; on the margin of and within it are oak trees of as large size as any on the surrounding field, some of which are 30 to 33 inches diameter—the height of the breast work from within is about a foot, and from without about two feet high, there being around it a kind of ditch or excavation, made by the earth being thrown up to form the breast work. That this has been done, is very apparent from the color of earth on the top of it being nearly the same as that every where around it after digging below the soil. Within the circular the soil is uncommonly rich and fertile. In a narrow Swamp also adjoining it are some small mounds and dikes or causeways, evidently of human workmanship.

About three or four miles further up the Valley is another very remarkable Mound, surrounded in part, as I was told by the man who lives adjoining it, by a similar entrenchment to the one above described, and a part of which I myself saw, comprising about 25 or 30 acres.

This Mound is of a pretty regularly square form and about 120 feet on each side at the base, regularly contracted on each side in an angle of about 45 or 50 deg. Its height is 30 or 33 feet, & it is pretty level at top, and covered with girdled oak timber of the largest size of upland oak in this country one of the trees being nearly or quite three feet diameter. On its sides also are large trees, shrubs, briars and flowering plants, some of which trees have perhaps for ages past been falling occasionally, and dragging the earth with their roots from the steep side of the Mound, some of which are even now lying in that situation; and to this cause and the ordinary operation of the elements, I attribute what of irregularity appears in its form; the top of it was last year planted with corn, and every tree upon it sacrilegiously killed. The whole superfices very rich and fertile, and he must be a sceptic indeed who should doubt of its having been a work of art.

On one side the Mound, and at the distance of 10 or 12 rods from it, runs a rapid creek of considerable size, which in time of freshes overflows its banks to a considerable height—on this side there is no appearance of the entrenchment, that extending only from the creek on one side of the Mound around to the creek on the other side. Whether there ever was one which has within ages past been swept away by the waters of the creek or not, is a matter of conjecture.

Near the Mound are, about fifteen pounding mortars, wrought in solid immovable limestone rocks of a perfectly regular form, and in almost a perfect state of preservation, two or three only of which I saw; the dimensions of one which I measured were seven inches diameter at the top, and seven inches deep, very regularly contracted to an obtuse point, with a flat perfectly circular brim around it of 4 1-2 or 5 inches breadth, wrought on the surface of the rock, and sunk a little below the general surface, giving the mortar with the brim very much the appearance of a Quaker's broad brimmed hat bottom upwards. The number of them I learned by the man who now occupies the ground.

Alabama Republican.