rom its junction with that river, there is
an extensive cavern, in which are deposited several mummies. Some tribes
which roam this region have a tradition, that the first Indian ascended
through this aperture, and settled on the earth's surface.

A few years since, on the Merrimac river in St. Louis county, a number of
pigmy graves were discovered. The coffins were of stone; and the length of
the bodies which they contained, judging from that of the coffins, could
not have been more than from three feet and a half to four feet. The
graves were numerous, and the skeletons in some instances nearly entire.

In the month of June (1830), a party of gentlemen, whilst in pursuit of
wild turkeys, in Hart county, Kentucky, discovered, on the top of a small
knoll, a hole sufficiently large to admit a man's body. Having procured
lights, they descended, and at the depth of about sixty feet, entered a
cavern, sixteen or eighteen feet square, apparently hewn out of solid
rock. The whole chamber was filled with human skeletons, which they
supposed, _from the size_, to be those of women and children. The place
was perfectly dry, and the bones were in a state of great preservation.
They wished to ascertain how deep the bones lay, and dug through them
between four and seven feet, but found them quite as plentiful as at the
top: on coming to this depth, dampness appeared, and an unpleasant
effluvia arising, obliged them to desist. There was no outlet to the
cavern. A large snake, which appeared to be perfectly docile, passed
several times round the apartment whilst they remained.

In a museum at New York, I saw one of those mummies alluded to, which
appeared to be remarkably small; but I had not an opportunity of examining
it minutely. Those that have been found in the most perfect state of
preservation were deposited in nitrous caves, and were enveloped in a
manner so different from the practices of the Indians, that the idea
cannot be entertained of their being the remains of the ancestors of the
present race. Flint gives the following description of one of them which
he carefully examined. He says, "The more the subject of the past races of
men and animals in this region is investigated, the more perplexed it
seems to become. The huge bones of the animals indicate them to be vastly
larger than any that now exist on the earth. All that I have seen and
heard of the remains of the men, would seem to shew that they were smaller
than the