Bobby Tells All About Alabama

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23827, 30 November 1940, Page 3 (Supplement)

Bobby Tells All About Alabama

TV IT Dear New .Zealand Friends. —I would like to tell you some of the most interesting sights in Alabama. The most famous of all is Vulcan, the gigantic 1 figure of the mythological god of metal working, atop Red Mountain. in Birmingham. This city also has tiie distinction of having the most unusual home in the world, "Vestavia," •tbe home of the' former Mayor, George Ward. It is a replica of the Temple of the Goddess Vesta, which once stood .near ancient Rome. Through Mobile's residential and suburban sections, runs the "Azalea Trail." « flower lined route of changing vistas on winch over a hundred thousand azalea plants, from small ones to bushes

£0 feet in circumference, display their brilliant colours. The flowers usually to open about the first of March. Annually, thousands of visitors go to Mobile during this time; the azaleas, bloom for about six weeks. Recently, much attention has been directed towards Moundville, 16 miles below Tuscaloosa. Extensive , excavations are being carried on there, by the Civilian Conservation Corps, whose discoveries in the' Indian mounds are or strange historical origin: skeletons and relics unearthed are believed to "be of a people who immigrated from Central America, probably Mayas, and tile first Indians to inhabit what is now the "Jnited States.

The museum at Moundville, recently constructed by the Alabama Museum of Natural History, contains displays of the relics and skeletons so far uncovered. The museum has two burial pits, and it was so arranged that only the layers of top soil have been taken off. and visitors may walk about on a gallery and look down into the pits and see the skeletons and relics in the positions in which they were placed no one knows how long ago. Moundville seems to have been the centre of an early civilisation. There are M 4 mounds, large, pyramid-like structures made of earth, the four sides of which ar.e slanting, and the instead of coining to a point is flat. They

cover an area of more than 135 acres, the largest being odk feet high, and surmised to have been a temple, or the lioine of the chief of the tribe. It occupies one and three-fourths acres of land. The other mounds are from 15 to 35 feet in height. Dr. Clarence B. Moore who conducted the first archaeological excavation on the mounds, in 1906, found the size of them almost unbelievable, when one considers that they were built by primitive people. It is estimated that to build the largest mound, .it would have required 10 years for a hundred men working 10 hours daily to do it— Best regards from America and Bobby Criise (12) Wilsonville, Ala; U.S.A.