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sewed it up. Afer this they washed the body with nitre, then let it lie seventy days; and having washed it again, bound it up in folds of linen, besmearing it over with gums which they used instead of glue. The relations then took home the body, and enclosing it in the wooden figure of a man, placed it in the catacombs. Another method of embalming was, injecting turpentine of ceder with a pipe into the body, without cutting it: they then salted it for seventy days, and afterwards drew out the pipe, which brought along with it the intestines. The nitre dried up the flesh leaving nothing but skin and bones. The third way was only cleansing the inside with salt and water, and salting it for seventy days.

The first of these methods could not have been employed by the Indians for want of palm wine, myrrh, cassia, and other perfumes. The second could not

be that practised by them, as it tended to waste the flesh and preserve the mere skin and bones-and the third is inadmissible, from its incapacity to resist the unremitting destruction and ravages of time.

An argument may be adduced to favor an opinion of the remote antiquity of the Indian mummies, from the entire and complete consuption of their bandages, wrappers, and bands-which on the Egyptian mummies continue to this day in higher preservation than the body they envelop. There is a mummy in an English collection of curiosities, brought from Egypt by the French, and taken from them by one of our privateers, which is remarkable for containing only the head and part of the thigh and leg bones wrapped in folds of fine linen to the consistence of three inches thick. The linen in some parts was as white and perfect as new, and on the legs

there was some appearance of the flesh still remaining, although, from a moderate calculation, it must have been embalmed upwards of two thousand years. It may then again be repeated, that the Indian mummies are of higher antiquity than the Egyptian, as the bandages are consumed on the one though not on the other; except, as I had occasion to remark, that the Indian ligatures were of a substance more succeptible of decay than the Egyptian. But this is a subject of too magnitude variety and diffusion for my purpose. I submit the fact for the consideration of a better judgment and an able pen, and conclude by informing you that I restored every article to the catacombsave some specimens retained as objects of the first curiosity, and blocking up the entry with the huge stones which originally closed it up, left the spot with the strongest emotions of vene

ration and displeasure: veneration for so sublime a monument of antiquity, and displeasure against the men whose barbarous and brutal hands reduced it to such a state of waste and desolation.

No other catacomb is known in the State, though barrows abound in various directions.

LETTER XXIII.

Excellent navigation between Limestone and Cincinnati-Augusta-The Little Miami of the Ohio-Columbia-Licking River-Cincinnati-details of this important townInteresting anecdote of a lady.

Cincinnati, State of Ohio, July, 1806.

THE navigation is so very good between Limestone and this town, a distance of sixty-eight miles, that I descended in two short days run, without meeting any obstruction, there being but one island close to the Kentucky shore in the whole course, and I understand that there is no other to be met with for seventy-two miles further down, which leaves a range of one hundred and fifty miles of free navigationa scope without example in any other

of the western waters.

Leaving Limestone seven miles, the first object I came to was Eagle Creek, on the right-hand shore. A little above it on the Kentucky side is a small town called Charles-town, opposite to which place, in the middle of the river is a very large sand-bar, the chan

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