ers in the course of time took care to effect. I have explored the catacomb, and can bear testimony to the industry and determination of the curious who resort to it to efface every mark of workmanship, and to destroy every evidence of its intention or original design!-The angles and ornaments of the nitches are mutilated; all projections and protuberances are struck off; every mummy removed, and so many fires have been made in the place, either to warm the visitors or to burn up the remains, that the shades, dispositions, and aspects, have been tortured into essential difference and change.

The descent is gradually inclined, without a rapid or fight of stairs. The width four feet, the height seven.— The passage but six feet long, is a proportion larger, and the catacomb extends one hundred paces by thirty-five. It is about eighteen feet high; the roof represents an irregular vault, and the floor an oblong square nearly level. From the nitches and shelvings on the sides, it might be conjectured, that the catacomb could contain in appropriate situations about two thousand mummies. I could ne

ver learn the exact quantity it did contain, the answer to my enquiries being "Oh! they burned up and destroyed hundreds." Nor could I arrive at any knowledge of the fashion, manner, and apparel of the mummies in general, or receive any other information than that "they were well lapped up, appeared sound and red, and consumed in the fire with a rapidity that baffled all observation and description."

Not content with such general and traditionary remarks, I employed several hands, and brought to light forty or fifty baskets of rubbish gleaned throughout the vault, both from the sides and from the floor. The dust of the heap was so light, impalpable and pungent, that it rose into the atmosphere and affected the senses so much as to cause effusion of the eyes and sneezing, to a troublesome degree. I still proceeded on a minute investigation, and separated from the general mass, several pieces of human limbs, fragments of bodies, solid, sound, and apparently capable of eternal duration with much violence they broke into parts, but emitted no dust, or shewed any inclination to putrization. The impalpable powder arose from the bands and ligatures with which they were bound,

the pungency of which denoted their composition to be vegetable matter.

In a cold state the subjects had no smell whatever, but when submitted to the action of fire they consumed with great violence, emitted no smoke, and diffused an agreeable effluvia which scented the air, but with no particular flagrance to which it could be assimilated..

How these bodies were embalmed, how long preserved; by what nation, and from what people descended, no ideas can be formed, nor any calculation made, but what must result from speculative fancy and wild conjectures. For my part, I am lost in the deepest ignorance. My readings affords me no knowledge; my travels no light. I have neither read, heard nor known of any of the North American Indians who formed catacombs for their dead, or who were acquainted with the art of preservation by embalming. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, had threemethods of embalming; but Diodorus observes that the ancient Egyptians had a fourth method, of far greater superiority. That manner is not mentioned by Diodorus, it has been extinct three thousand years, and yet I cannot think it presumptuous to conceive that the Indians were acquainted with it, or with a mode of equal virtue and effect.

The Kentuckyans assert in the very words of the Greek that the features of the face and the form and appearance of the whole body were so well preserved, that they must have been the exact representations of the living subject. The Indians could not have the art of embalming in the. methods made known by Herodotus, because they never: could have had the necessary materials-as evidence let: us review the three systems, to which, in Egypt, different prices were attached. n the most esteemed method, they extracted the brains by the nose with a crooked iron, and then poured in drugs: afterwards they opened the body, took out the bowels, washed the inside with palm wine, and having rubbed into it pounded perfumes, filled the cavity with myrrh, cassia, and other spices, and then sewed up. After this they washed the body with nitre, then. let it lie seventy days; and having washed it again, bound it up in folds of linnen, besmearing it over with gums which they used instead of glue. The relations then took home the body, and enclosing it in the wooden figure of a

it

man, placed it in the catacombs. Another method of em balming was, injecting turpentine of cedar with a pipe into the body, without cutting it: they then salted it for seventy days, and afterwards drew out the pipe, which brought along with it the intestines. The nitre dried up the flesh leaving nothing but skin and bones. The third way was only cleansing the inside with salt and water, and salting it for seventy days.

The first of these methods could not have been employed by the Indians for want of palm wine, myrrh, cassia, and other perfumes. The second could not be that practised by them, as it tended to waste the flesh and preserve the mere skin and bores-and the third is inadmissible, from its incapacity to resist the unremitting destruction and ravages of time.

An argument may be adduced to favour an opinion of the remote antiquity of the Indian mummies, from the entire and complete consumption of their bandages, wrappers, and bands which on the Egyptian mummies continue to this day in higher preservation than the body they envelop. There is a mummy in an English collection of curiosities, brought from Egypt by the French, and taken from them by one of our privateers, which is remarkable for containing only the head and part of the thigh and leg bones wrapped in folds of fine linnen to the consistence of three inches thick. The linnen in some parts was as white and perfect as new, and on the legs there was some appearance of the flesh still remaining, although, from a moderate calculation, it must have been embalmed upwards of two thousand years. It mayTM then again be repeated, that the Indian mummies are of higher antiquity than the Egyptian, as the bandages are consumed on the one though not on the other; except, as I had occasion to remark, that the Indian ligatures were of a substance more susceptible of decay than the Egyptian. But this is a subject of too great magnitude, variety and diffusion, for my purpose. I submit the fact for the consideration of a better judgment and an able pen, and conclude by informing you that I restored every article to the catacomb-save some specimens retained as objects of the first curiosity, and blocking up the entry with huge stones which originally closed it up, left the spot with the strongest emotions of veneration and displeasure veneration for so sublime a monument of an

tiquity, and displeasure against the men whose barbarous and brutal hands reduced it to such a state of waste and desolation.

No other catacomb is known in the State, though barrows abound in various directions.

LETTER XXII.

Excellent navigation between Limestone and Cincinnati Augusta--The Little Miami of the Ohio-ColumbiaLicking River-Cincinnati-details of this important town-Interesting anecdote of a lady.

Cincinnati, State of Ohio, July, 1806.

THE navigation is so very good between Limestone and this town, a distance of sixty-eight miles, that I descended in two short days run, without meeting any ob struction, there being but one island close to the Kentucky shore' in the whole course, and I understand that there is no other to be met with for seventy-two miles further down, which leaves a range of one hundred and fifty miles of free navigation-a scope without example in any other of the western waters.

Leaving Limestone seven miles, the first object I came to was Eagle Creek, on the right hand shore. A little above it on the Kentucky side is a small town called Charlestown, opposite to which place, in the middle of the river is a very large sand bar, the channel past being on the left hand shore. Four miles from Eagle, is Bracken Creek on the Kentucky shore. It gives name to the county through which it runs. The county-town is fixed at the mouth of an extensive bottom, and in a very handsome situation. It is yet small, not being long laid out. Augusta is the name given to it. I am disposed to think very favourably of the taste of the inhabitants from the judicious manner they have cleared the timber of their settlement. They have left on a very fine bank of gradual descent to the water, six rows of stately trees, which form several grand avenues and afford shade from the surt

without obstructing the breeze or circulation of air. They have also left clumps of trees and small groves in the improvements which have a pleasing effect, and strike the attention more forcibly, as Augusta is the only town on the river which has respected the ornaments of nature or left a single shrub planted by her chaste yet prodigal hand. In all other settlements the predominant rage is to destroy the woods, and what the axe cannot overturn is left to the vigour of fire. This element is applied to a work which mocks the labour of man, and in a short time converts the greatest forests and the richest scenes to a dreary prospect of dissolution and waste.

Between Augusta and the Little Miami of the Ohio, a distance of forty-two miles, I met with no circumstance worth relating. The Little Miami of the Ohio is sixty or seventy yards wide at its mouth, is sixty miles to its source, and affords no navigation. The lands on its banks are reckoned among the richest on the continent of America ; they lie low, are considerably settled and sell for from three to twenty dollars per acre. The river abounds in fish, runs over a rocky channel, and is as clear as fountain water. Just below the junction of this stream with the Ohio is the town of Columbia, which rose out of the woods a few years ago with great rapidity and promise, and now is on the decline, being sickly and subject to insulation, when the waters of the Miami are backed up the country by the rise of the Ohio in the spring; the current of the Ohio being so impetuous as to hinder the Miami from flowing into the stream.

Directly on turning into Cincinnati, I saw Licking River on the Kentucky shore. It is a large stream navigable for canoes and batteux, a considerable way up. The town of Newport is situated at the point formed by the junctions of this river with the Ohio.

Cincinnati is opposite the mouth of Licking on the right hand shore. It is four hundred and ninety-three miles from Pittsburgh, was once the capital of the North Western Territory, and is now the largest town of the Ohio State, though not the seat of government; Chilicothe being the capital, and the residence of the governor and legislative body. The town consists of about three hundred houses, frame and log built on two plains, the higher and the lower, each of which commands a fine view of