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THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

About two thousand years ago there lived a very curious people in North America known as the Mound-builders. Where they came from no one knows, but it is supposed that they were either descendants of people from Japan, who had been driven across the Pacific by storms, and washed on the western coast of America, or that they originally came from Asia by the way of Behring Strait. Many people suppose them to have been the descendants of the Shepherd Kings, who journeyed from Central India to Egypt about the time of the building of the Tower of Babel; they were called the Shepherd Kings because they were shepherds, and came down into Egypt driving their flocks before them. Here they conquered the country and made themselves kings; they built many wonderful temples, and founded Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, in honor to their great god, the Sun, whom they worshipped, under the name of Osiris; Isis, the moon, being their chief goddess. It was supposed that Osiris dwelt in the body of the sacred bull Apis, and therefore this bull was adored as a god. He lived in a splendid temple, the walls of which shone with gold and silver, and sparkled with gems and precious stones brought from India and Ethiopia; it was the duty of the priests to wait upon him with the greatest care, and he was always fed from golden dishes. At the time of the rising of the Nile there was always a festival to Apis, when he was displayed to the people covered with the richest and finest embroidered cloths, and surrounded by troops of boys singing songs to him. If he lived twenty-five years he was drowned in a sacred fountain, but if he died before that time all Egypt went into mourning, which continued until a new Apis was found. The successor must be a perfectly black calf, with a square white spot on the forehead, the figure of an eagle upon the back, a crescent on the side, and a beetle on the tongue. Of course these marks were made by the priests, but the people did not know that, and supposed that the soul of Apis had passed into this calf, which they received with great joy.

The Egyptians worshipped many other animals besides the sacred bull; the dog, wolf, hawk, crocodile, and cat were all considered gods, and any one who might kill one of these animals, even by accident, was punished with death. When a cat died every one in the family cut off his eyebrows, and when a dog died the whole head was shaven. And if on their journeys the Egyptians found the dead body of a cat or dog, they always brought it home and embalmed it with great care. The reason why the Egyptians reverenced these animals was, that they believed that the soul of man, after his death, passed into the bodies of different animals, and that after three thousand years it would return and inhabit a human form again, so, of course, they did not look upon a cat or dog as we do, merely as an animal to be petted or used, but they thought that in this animal dwelt the soul of some human being, and hence it was sacred to them. One of the great gods of Egypt was the River Nile; and no wonder that they worshipped it, as it was to them the means of life. It never rains in Egypt, and the land would be like a desert were it not for the overflowing of the Nile. Once a year this great river, swollen by the waters that have poured into it from the lake country above, overflows its banks, watering the country on either side of it, and leaving, when it recedes, a deposit of rich mud upon the land; then the people sow and plant, sure of a good harvest. Up and down the Nile Valley extends a chain of rocky mountains, and these the Egyptians used as places of burial. The tombs, or catacombs, as they are called, are ornamented with pictures and sculptures which may be seen to this day. The subjects of these paintings were always taken from life. People were represented planting, sowing, and reaping, spinning, weaving, sewing, washing, dressing, and playing. Even the games of children were shown in these tombs, and the balls and dolls and toys with which they played. Would you not feel strange to stand in one of these catacombs and see the figure of a doll carved in the rock, and to know that it is the tomb of some little Egyptian girl who died three thousand years ago? The games which children play to-day are not new, and when you have a game of ball or top or leap-frog, when you play with your dolls, or sit down and tell each other fairy stories, you are only doing the same thing that the little Egyptian and Grecian boys and girls did thousands of years ago; it makes them seem like real children to think that, doesn't it?

But different as the Egyptian religion was from ours, there was one thing which they believed which we also believe in, the resurrection of the dead; and as to-day we symbolize this belief by pictures of the lily, the egg, the butterfly, and other objects, so the Egyptians used the lotus, which bloomed on the waves of the Nile, opening every morning and closing every night, as the symbol of the resurrection, and we find this flower, carved in stone, used as an ornament all throughout Egypt.

Of all the works of the ancient Egyptians, the greatest are the pyramids, the tombs of the kings; these were mostly built during the reigns of the Shepherd Kings.

After a long time, perhaps five or six hundred years, the ancient inhabitants of Egypt drove out the Shepherd Kings. It is supposed then that they crossed back to Asia, wandering through that country from the south to the north, spending some time in Siberia, where they built mounds like those in our own country, then crossing Behring Strait they reached North America, wandered down the Mississippi Valley, building mounds and temples, journeyed through Mexico, where are found some of the most remarkable of these remains, and so on across the Isthmus of Panama into Peru, where at the time of the conquest of that country by the Spaniards the sun and moon were worshipped as gods, just as had been done in Egypt thousands of years before, and where was found a magnificent temple of the sun, the inside walls of which were covered almost entirely of gold. So you see the reason why it is thought that perhaps the mound-builders were descendants of the Shepherd Kings is that these mounds and temples are like those found in the old world. In Mexico and Peru all the great buildings were made in the pyramidal form, while, as I have said, in Siberia have been found mounds like those in the United States.

Some of the most curious of these mounds are found in the State of Ohio. One, in the form of a serpent, with the tail ending in a triple coil, is very curious. It is about a thousand feet long and extends along a bluff which rises above Brush Creek, in Adams County, Ohio. The neck of the serpent is stretched out and slightly curved over, and in its mouth is another mound in the form of an egg.

Many of these mounds, from their shapes, it is thought, were used for fortifications, and sometimes they are at regular spaces apart, which shows they may have been used for sending signals across the country. They were made almost entirely of earth, but sometimes brick and stone were used. Sometimes they were built very high, and on the tops of these highest mounds have been found pieces of burned wood, showing that they were probably used as places of worship, and that the priests offered up burnt-offerings and sacrifices there. The mounds are sometimes in the form of animals and men. In those that were used as places of worship human bones have been found, and with them many things which show that the Mound-builders must have known some of the arts which the tribes who lived in America at the time of its discovery by the Europeans knew nothing of; among these things are carvings in stone, pottery, articles of ornament in metal, silver and copper tools, such as axes, chisels, and knives, beside beads, bracelets, carved pipes, models in clay of birds, quadrupeds, and human faces, etc.

Is it not strange to think of this race of people who lived here in our own America so many years ago? We would like to know how they lived, what they looked like, and what language they spoke, but we cannot even guess. We only know that ages after the time of the Mammoth and Mastodon, this curious race, coming doubtless from the East, entered the Mississippi Valley; that they settled there and built those wonderful mounds at least two thousand years ago, if not longer; that finally they disappeared, and we should never have known of them but for the works they have left.