PLATE V. No. 2.
WORK NEAR JACKTOWN, LICKING COUNTY, OHIO.
This work is situated eighty rods north of the National Road, and two miles east of Jacktown, Licking County, Ohio.
The ground here is elevated, the enclosure surrounding the summit of a hill, not very abrupt; the soil is a mass of broken sand-rock. From the top of the inner wall, e, in the section a b, to the bottom of the ditch between the walls, the distance is three feet, generally less; both the height of the wall and depth of the ditch, varying at different points. Of the entrances, c, c, c, the northern is the widest, being forty feet; the eastern twenty-eight, and the other twenty-two feet, and without mounds or barriers. The circles at figures 1, 2, 3, 4, represent mounds of stones, such as one, or at most, two men might carry, loosely thrown together. No. 1 was eighteen feet high, with a base of ninety feet diameter. No. 2, fifteen feet height and seventy feet base. No. 3, the same. Their bases are not regular circles, and all of them are now (May, 1838) much injured by the inhabitants of Jacktown, who use the stone for cellar walls. This consists of the coarse-grained sandstone of the coal series, and constitutes an excellent material for rough walls.
I did not observe any permanent supply of water in the neighborhood, or any reservoirs within the enclosures, which might otherwise be regarded as defensive work. The largest diameter is seven hundred and fifty feet; the shorter six hundred. The interior space rises above the well and ditch several feet, in an oval or rounded form. One-fourth of a mile to the north-east is another stone mound, like those within the work, which is fifteen feet high, and composed of loose sandstone.
About one mile and a half to the south-west, and on the south side of the National Road, on sec. 10, T. 19, R. 17, is a very large stone mound, originally forty feet high; with a base, one hundred and eighty feet in diameter.
Fifteen feet of the apex was removed, many years since, by a believer in Robert Kid's treasures, and a cavity sunk nearly to the bottom with much labor. It is even now a commanding object, rising among the trees of a thrifty western forest. The stones are thrown together promiscuously, but in the general form of a regular cone. Some of them have been carried away for masonry. Stone mounds were doubtless made for the same purposes as the earthen ones, the loose fragments of rocks being convenient, and more easily carried into place than earth. Walls of the same material are sometimes found, as well as some of earth and stone mixed.
I have nowhere seen, nor ever heard of, the mark of a tool on any of these stones.
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