The great mound, near Miamisburg, Ohio.

In both the Egyptian the American pyramids the outside of the structures was covered with a thick coating of smooth, shining cement.

Humboldt considered the Pyramid of Cholula of the same type as the Temple of Jupiter Belus, the pyramids of Meidoun Dachhour, and the group of Sakkarah, in Egypt.

Greatpyramid of XCOCH.

In both America and Egypt the pyramids were used as places of sepulture; and it is a remarkable fact that the system of earthworks and mounds, kindred to the pyramids, is found even in England.  Silsbury Hill, at Avebury, is an artificial mound one hundred and seventy feet high.  It is connected with ramparts, avenues (fourteen hundred and eighty yards long), circular ditches, and stone circles, almost identical with those found in the valley of the Mississippi.  In Ireland the dead were buried in vaults of stone, and the earth raised over them in pyramids flattened on the top.  They were called “moats” by the people.  We have found the stone vaults at the base of similar truncated pyramids in Ohio.  There can be no doubt that the pyramid was a developed and perfected mound, and that the parent form of these curious structures is to be found in Silsbury Hill, and in the mounds of earth of Central America and the Mississippi Valley.

We find the emblem of the Cross in pre-Christian times venerated as a holy symbol on both sides of the Atlantic; and we find it explained as a type of the four rivers of the happy island where the civilization of the race originated.

We find everywhere among the European and American nations the memory of an Eden of the race, where the first men dwelt in primeval peace and happiness, and which was afterward destroyed by water.

We find the pyramid on both sides of the Atlantic, with its four sides pointing, like the arms of the Cross, to the four cardinal points-a reminiscence of Olympus; and in the Aztec representation of Olympos (Aztlan) we find the pyramid as the central and typical figure.

Is it possible to suppose all these extraordinary coincidences to be the result of accident?  We might just as well say that the similarities between the American and English forms of government were not the result of relationship or descent, but that men placed in similar circumstances had spontaneously and necessarily reached the same results.

CHAPTER VI.

Gold and silver the sacred metals of Atlantis.

Money is the instrumentality by which man is lifted above the limitations of barter.  Baron Storch terms it “the marvellous instrument to which we are indebted for our wealth and civilization.”

It is interesting to inquire into the various articles which have been used in different countries and ages as money.  The following is a table of some of them: