Their sculptures show a considerable degree of progress.  They consist of figures of birds, animals, reptiles, and the faces of men, carved from various kinds of stones, upon the bowls of pipes, upon toys, upon rings, and in distinct and separate figures.  We give the opinions of those who have examined them.

Mr. Squier observes:  “Various though not abundant specimens of their skill have been recovered, which in elegance of model, delicacy, and finish, as also in fineness of material, come fully up to the best Peruvian specimens, to which they bear, in many respects, a close resemblance.  The bowls of most of the stone pipes are carved in miniature figures of animals, birds, reptiles, etc.  All of them are executed with strict fidelity to nature, and with exquisite skill.  Not only are the features of the objects faithfully represented, but their peculiarities and habits are in some degree exhibited. . . .  The two heads here presented, intended to represent the eagle, are far superior in point of finish, spirit, and truthfulness, to any miniature carvings, ancient or modern, which have fallen under the notice of the authors.  The peculiar defiant expression of the king of birds is admirably preserved in the carving, which in this respect, more than any other, displays the skill of the artist.”

From the mounds of the Ohio valley

Traces of cloth with “doubled and twisted fibre” have been found in the mounds; also matting; also shuttle-like tablets, used in weaving.  There have also been found numerous musical pipes, with mouth-pieces and stops; lovers’ pipes, curiously and delicately carved, reminding us of Bryant’s lines—­

     “Till twilight came, and lovers walked and wooed
     In a forgotten language; and old tunes,
     From instruments of unremembered forms,
     Gave the soft winds a voice.”

There is evidence which goes to prove that the Mound Builders had relations with the people of a semi-tropical region in the direction of Atlantis.  Among their sculptures, in Ohio, we find accurate representations of the lamantine, manatee, or sea-cow—­found to-day on the shores of Florida, Brazil, and Central America—­and of the toucan, a tropical and almost exclusively South American bird.  Sea-shells from the Gulf, pearls from the Atlantic, and obsidian from Mexico, have also been found side by side in their mounds.

The antiquity of their works is now generally conceded.  “From the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon,” says Mr. Gliddon, “we have bones of at least two thousand five hundred years old; from the pyramids and the catacombs of Egypt both mummied and unmummied crania have been taken, of still higher antiquity, in perfect preservation; nevertheless, the skeletons deposited in our Indian mounds, from the Lakes to the Gulf, are crumbling into dust through age alone.”

All the evidence points to the conclusion that civilized or semi-civilized man has dwelt on the western continent from a vast antiquity.  Maize, tobacco, quinoa, and the mandico plants have been cultivated so long that their wild originals have quite disappeared.