A. JS. Verritt — The Bermuda Islands. 



463 



We also found gunflints and flint cores from which they had been 

 made, silver and brass military buttons, broken clay pipes, etc. All 

 these, however, probably belonged to the period of the war of 1812. 

 Charles Island, or "Goat Island," a little farther south, is rather 

 smaller and still more barren, as it is covered in some places with 

 drifting sand. It also has the ruins of a small fort on its highest 

 point. This stone redoubt was built by Governor Moore about 1614, 

 and mounted only two guns. (Fig. 22.) 



Figure 22. — Charles Island and Ruins of Charles Fort, built about 1614. 



Norwood, the engineer, stated in 1063 that this fort was even 

 then "fallen into decay." In digging into a bed of loose sand, 

 undermined by the sea, on the north side of this island, we found an 

 abundance of large fossil snail shells, of a species not now living on 

 these smaller islands, and nearby, two skeletons of soldiers, associated 

 with military brass buttons, made in Dublin, and stamped with three 

 mounted cannon, in a row, indicating an artilleryman. 



The most interesting flnds on Castle Island were the broken 

 pearly shells of the West Indian Whelk (Livona pica), which had, 

 apparently, been used as food. This mollusk, which is eaten in the 

 West Indies and called the " whelk," has been so long extinct in the 

 Bermudas that nothing is now known of its former presence in the 

 living state. Its large, thick, mottled, and partly pearly shell is 



