Peruvian Antiquities
The old Peruvians were great potters and thousands of their old water vessels and food dishes, which were buried with the dead, have been dug up. These had curious forms and were often adorned with colored patterns. Some of these jars were shaped like human faces, human figures, or animals. Sometimes they were “whistling jars,” which were so made that they whistled when water was poured in or out of them. The old Peruvians were skilled in working copper, silver, and gold, and made many ornaments and figures in these metals.
Elephant Mound, Wisconsin
The most remarkable instance of the kind, however, is that of the big elephant mound found a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin River, so perfect in its proportions and complete in its representations of an elephant that its builders must have been well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal which they delineated
Great Serpent, Adams County, Ohio
A few instances of the circle and square are found in association with the animal mounds, while in Ohio, on Brush Creek in Adams 34County, the “Great Serpent,” and the “Alligator” in Licking County furnish proof that either the same people built them or at least the same impulses, religious or otherwise, actuated the people of both districts. The former of the above figures is well described by its name, “with its head conforming to the crest of a hill, and its body winding back for 700 feet in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail.” The length of the latter “from the point of the nose following the curves of the tail to the tip, is about 250 feet, the breadth of the body forty feet and the length of the legs or paws each thirty-six feet.”