This seems to be the case even though sometimes three or four temple mounds are found together surrounded by a rampart just sufficient to enclose them with the necessary space for circulation all round; in which case, however, it is evident that they have passed the line separating the two divisions, and may, probably must, be classified as really sacred enclosures. These are generally found in the South, in Texas, and in the States most nearly bordering on Mexico, which looks as if they belonged to another race more nearly allied to the Toltecs or Aztecs than to the northern tribes.
The only remaining class of mounds are those representing "Animals," to which plates xxxv. to xliv. of Messrs. Squier and Davis's book are devoted. One of these, our authors have no doubt, represents a serpent 700 feet long as he lies with his tail curled up into a spiral form, and his mouth gaping to swallow an egg (?) 160 feet long by 60 feet across. This at first sight looks so like one of Stukeley's monstrous inventions that the first impulse is to reject it as an illusion on the part of the surveyors. When, however, we bear in mind that the American mound-builders did represent not only men, but animals, quadrupeds, and lizards, in the same manner, and on the same relative scale, all improbability vanishes. At the same time the simple fact that the form is so easily recognisable here is in itself sufficient to prove that our straight-lined stone rows were not erected with any such intention, and could only be converted into Dracontia by the most perverted imagination.
Though therefore we may assume that this mound really represents a serpent, it by no means follows that it was an idol or was worshipped. It seems to represent an action — the swallowing of something, but whether a globe or a grave is by no means clear, and must be left for further investigation. It is, however, only by taking it in connection with the other animal mounds in America that we can hope to arrive at a solution. They were not apparently objects of worship, and seem to have no connexion with anything found in the Old World.
The other mounds representing quadrupeds are quite unmistakable: they are a freak of this people whoever they were. But it seems difficult to explain why they should take this Brobdignagian way of representing the animals they possessed,
