As we entered the park we were greeted by the cheery piping of
the Baltimore oriole-a warm, rich welcome from this brilliantly
colored bird as he fluttered about the elm like a dash of
southern sunshine. Try as we would we found our thoughts
straying from the dim days of the dead past to the ever living
present, for bees and birds were busy everywhere, telling their
joy in melodious and ecstatic notes.
European travelers say that our woods are nearly devoid of
birds, and that the songs of such as we have are not to be
compared with those about which their poets have written so
charmingly. They never were out among our blossoming wilderness
while the sun poured his first rays through delicate green
leaves and mounds of flowers or they never would have written
that way.
When from a rising eminence of land we let our eyes rove over
the vast undulating country around us, only the more prominent
features impress themselves on our view. The lesser details, the
waving grain, the blossoming sumac, the small brooklet, which
attract the immediate passerby, are lost in the distance, but
the range of forest clad hills, the wide expanse of fertile
plain, or the purpling hills in the distance, determine the
landscape and claim our attention. So in the light of the
present century let us note what we can of these ancient and
forgotten people. "Distance lends enchantment to the view," and
this is true of distance in time, or culture as well as in
space.
In memory we live over again those scenes, when a strange race
met in this very spot to worship. In fancy we see again vast
multitudes of people who assembled at the head of a victorious
warrior-king who returned from the field of battle, to offer
sacrifice upon the altar in the center of the oval. The casting
off of the old skin of the serpent may have been to these
primitive people typical of immortality. "Then a kite, by
producing death, would be to them the working of some powerful
spirit through that serpent. Its power to destroy life no doubt
caused it to be held in great veneration by many primitive
tribes. Likewise any striking object in Nature, such as a river,
lake, precipitous cliff, with singular shaped stone such as we
have here on the crescent shaped plateau rising from Brush
Creek, would have been regarded as the abode of some spirit and
would be worshipped accordingly. That such objects are
worshipped the world over we have abundant testimony, and it
will be found in all such cases that there is some peculiarity
about the contour of the land on which are placed these objects,
that would be sure to catch the eye of a superstitious race."
There has been another serpent mound discovered in Warren
County, but space forbids a description of it. Not far from the
city of Toronto, Canada, we also find another.
"The Great Serpent Mound" in Adams County has a counterpart in
the Old World. In Scotland there is a very remarkable and
distinct serpent, constructed of stone. This work has so much in
common with the Ohio serpent that we reproduce the description
as given by Miss Gordon Cummin in Good Words for March, 1872.
"The mound is situated upon a grassy plain. The tail of the
serpent rests near the shore of Loch Nell, and the mound
gradually rises seventeen to twenty feet in height and is
continued for three hundred feet, forming a double curve like
the letter S, and wonderfully perfect in anatomical outline.
This we perceive the more perfect on reaching the head, which
lies at the western end... The head forms a circular cairn, on
which, at the time of a visit there in 1871, there still
remained some trace of an altar, which has since wholly
disappeared. On excavating the circular cairn, or circle of
stones forming the head, a chamber containing burnt bones,
charcoal and burnt hazelnuts, and an implement of flint were
found. The removal of peat, moss and heather from the back of
the reptile showed that the whole length of the spine was
carefully constructed, with regularly and symmetrically placed
stones at such angles as to throw off rain... The spine is, in
fact, a long narrow causeway made of large stones, set like the
vertebrae of some huge animal. They form a ridge, sloping off at
each side, which is continued downward with an arrangement of
smaller stones suggestive of ribs. The mound has been formed in
such a position that the worshippers standing at the altar would
naturally look eastward, directly along the whole length of the
great reptile and across the dark lake to the triple peaks of
Ben Cruachan. This position must have been carefully selected,
as from no other point are the three peaks visible. General
Forlong, in commenting on this, says
"'Here, then, we have an earth-formed snake, emerging in the
usual manner from the dark blue water, at the base, as it were,
of a triple cone - Scotland's Mount Hermon - just as we so
frequently meet snakes and their shrines in the East.'
"Is there not something more than mere coincidence in the
resemblance between Loch Nell and the Ohio Serpent, to say
nothing of the topography of their respective situations? Each
has the head pointing west, and each terminates with a circular
enclosure, containing an altar, from which, looking along the
most prominent portion of the serpent, the rising sun may be
seen. If the serpent of Scotland is the symbol of an ancient
faith surely that of Ohio is the same."
Rev. MacLean of Greenville, Ohio, is a well known writer on
these topics. During the summer of 1881, while in the employ of
the Bureau of Ethnology, visited the place, taking with him a
thoroughly competent surveyor, and made a very careful plan of
the work for the bureau.
