Behemoth: A Legend

"UPON the summit of a mountain which beetled in the remote west over the dwellings and defences of a race long since vanished, stood, at the close of a midsummer's day, a gigantic shape whose vastness darkened the whole vale beneath.... Below in a thousand groups were gathered, in their wonted evening worship, that strange people who have left upon our hills and prairies so many monuments of their power, and who yet, by some mighty accident, have taken the trumpet out of the hand of Fame, and closed for ever, as regards their historical and domestic character, the busy lips of tradition. Still we can gather vaguely, that the Mound-builders accomplished a career in the West, corresponding, though less magnificent and imposing, with that which the Greeks and Romans accomplished in what is styled by courtesy the Old World. The hour has been when our own West was thronged with empires."