74 PATTERSON v. M'CAUSLAND.—3 BLAND.

On contemplating the traces of what appears to have been the
long-since abandoned fortifications, mounds, &c., found in the
great valley of the Ohio, and in other parts of our country, there
seems to be a disposition in some, to consider them as the remains
of a people partially or altogether civilized; and in order to shew
that a sufficient time had elapsed for such a people, like some of
the Greeks who had sunk into the barbarism of Albanians, to fall
back into the condition of the savage tribes first found, by Euro-
peans, to be inhabiting this country, the large forest trees, which
had grown up out of those remains, have been felled, and the con-
centric rings of their trunks counted for the purpose of thus evis-
cerating from them evidence of the lapse of some hundreds of years
since those supposed fortifications had been abandoned. But
merely plausible deductions, or bold flights of fancy, however in-
genious or striking, cannot be received as matters of history, much
less as judicially established truths. McCulloh's Researches con-
cerning the Aboriginal History of America, Appendix 2. (h)

dred. De Candolle estimates the age of a Mexican cypress at six thousand
years; but then his estimate was formed by dividing the semi-diameter of
the trunk, by the average thickness of the layers of that species of tree, and
for reasons before mentioned, cannot be relied upon. If it were indeed so
old, its young shoot must have been watered by the waves of the deluge.
The most aged as well as the largest trees, in the northern parts of the United
States, belong to the species, platanus occidentalis, American plane tree, as it
is called in Europe, or the button wood, as it is called in New England, or
sycamore, as it is more commonly called in the Western and Southern States.
The largest and most aged trees, indigenous to the Southern States, belong
to the species cupresses thyoides, white cedar, as it is called in New England,
or cypress, as it is commonly called at the South."—Essay on Vegetable
Physiology, by Armstrong, Professor, &c., Washington College, Virg. chap, 6;
The Farmers' Register, by Ruffin. vol. 7, No. 3.

It would seem that the pinus lambertiana, here spoken of, attains as great
a size in the valley of the Columbia River as in California, for Mr. Nuttall, in
describing a bird called Audubon's wood warbler, says: " We may notice in
this species as a habit, that, unlike many other birds of its tribe, it occasion-
ally frequents trees, particularly the water oaks, and the lower branches of
those gigantic firs, which attain not uncommonly a height of two hundred
and forty feet."—The Birds of America, by Audubon, 2 vol. 27.

(h) " The possession of the Wyoming Valley has not been an object of the
white man's ambition or cupidity alone. It has been the subject of contro-
versy, and the fierce battle ground of various Indian tribes, within the white
man's time, but for his possession; and from the remains of fortifications
discovered there, so ancient, that the largest oaks and pines have struck root
upon the ramparts, and in the entrenchments, it must once have been the
seat of power; and perhaps of a splendid court, thronged by chivalry, and
taste, and beauty—of a race of men far different from the Indians, known
to us since the discovery of Columbus."—1 Stone's Life of Brant, 319.

Extract of a letter from John Locke, dated Cincinnati, 10th of September,
1838. describing a place called Fort Hill, the remains of an ancient fortifica-
tion in Adams County, in the State of Ohio:

''In the midst of the enclosed table is a pond, which, although it had re-
cently been drained of three feet of its usual contents, still, on the 25th of