Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE MOUND BUILDERS Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters sure and fast Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. Far in thy realm, withdrawn Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom ; And glorious ages gone, Lie deep within the shadows of thy womb. Full many a mighty name Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered. With thee are silent fame, Forgotten arts, and wisdom. —W. C. Bryant. "Who can read the history of the past? Who is there who can tell the story of creation's morn? It is not written in history, neither does it live in tradition. There is mystery here, but it is hid by the darkness of bygone ages." "There is a true history here, but we have not learned well the alphabet used. Here are doubtless wondrous scenes, but our standpoint is removed by time so vast that only the rude outlines can be determined. The delicate tracery, the body of the picture, are hidden from our eye. The question as to the antiquity and primitive history of man is full of interest in proportion as the solution is set with difficulties. -We question the past, but only here and there a response is heard. Surely bold is he who would attempt, from the few data at hand, to reconstruct the history of timesand people so far removed. We quickly become convinced that many centuries and tens of centuries have rolled away since man's first appearance on the earth. We become impressed with the fact that multitudes of people have moved over the surface of the earth and sunk into the night of oblivion without leaving a trace of their existence, without a memorial through which we might have at least learned their names." "In Egypt we find the seat of an ancient civilization which was in its power many centuries bef...