PLATE VI. No. 2.
FORTIFIED POSITION, WEYMOUTH, OHIO.
At Weymouth, five miles north-east of Medina Centre, Medina County, the east branch of the Rocky River, which is about fifty feet wide, passes rapidly through a narrow gulf in the rocks, from forty to fifty feet deep, with sides nearly vertical, and composed of soapstone, and thin bands of sandstone interstratified. The fall of the stream is estimated at one hundred and twenty-five feet in a mile and a half, along which numerous mills and machinery are placed.
On a narrow point, protected on all sides but one by the precipice and the stream, the mound-builders entrenched themselves behind three walls of earth, with exterior ditches, at present two and three feet deep. The embankments are also from two to three feet high, and are without openings or gateways.
The occupants must have passed in and out of the work by steps, leading over the walls. In excavating, the rock is found at the depth of two and three feet. The space inside the parallels was used by the present occupants as a burying- ground; but is now abandoned, because graves cannot be sunk to the usual depth without cutting away the gritty sandstone beneath.
It would be difficult to find a position more inaccessible to a foe.
From the inner wall to the point of the hill is three hundred feet; across the neck on the outside parallel is two hundred feet. The space inside the work is, therefore, not large. The soil is a stiff clay. On the south and east the ground rises, but not rapidly.
There is a small mound, m inside the enclosure, made partly of earth and partly of stone, and also others outside on the north, very small, and filled with bones.
In the crevices of the walls hundreds of yellow rattlesnakes had their winter abode, until the quarries began to be worked, and their retreats were invaded by the workmen, who killed them in great numbers.
Copyright © 2015 Calvin & Rosanna Hamilton. All rights reserved.