Gushing.] ^^" [Nov. 6, 



His antiquarian curiosity regarding these things was thoroughly aroused . 

 But believing them to be the remains possibly of some old-time wreck- 

 age, or more probably of some casual deposit made by ancient fisher- 

 men and never recovered, and finding work in] the water-soaked, foul- 

 smelling muck most diflicult to pursue, he discontinued his researches 

 on the second day. In order, however, to ascertain whether the relics 

 he had secured and in part brought away were historic or prehistoric — 

 that is of the Spanish or of a purely aboriginal period^ — he called at the 

 Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, when passing through 

 Philadelphia some weeks later, to see the Curator of the American Sec- 

 tion of the Archaeological Department, Mr. Henry C. Mercer, whom he 

 had met in southern Europe a year or two previously. Mr. Mercer was 

 absent, but it chanced that during the same hour I, too, called at the 

 Museum to pay a brief visit to my friend there, the Director, Mr. Stew- 

 art Culin. Thus I was so fortunate as to hear Colonel Durnford's 

 account of the finds. I was also privileged to accompany the President of 

 the Department, Dr. William Pepper (for I was at the time on sick-leave 

 and under his care), when, in response to a courteous note of invita- 

 tion, he called on Colonel and Mrs. Durnford, at the Bellevue Hotel. 

 With him I saw some of the Marco relics, the piece of rope, the tray 

 and one of the worked blocks or billets of wood. I observed that the 

 rope had been slightly charred at one point, and that the billet was an 

 unfinished object. This, with Colonel Durnford's remarkably clear 

 memoranda and description of the place whence these relics had been 

 derived, led me to infer that it, the place, was not of an isolated charac- 

 ter. The relics themselves were indubitably Indian and pre-Colum- 

 bian. To me they evidenced remote aboriginal occupation, residence 

 that is of the actual site in which they had been found, rather than of 

 merely the neighboring shell-banks. I believed, indeed, that their con- 

 dition and their occurrence beneath the peaty deposits of muck might 

 even betoken some such phase of life in southern Florida as that of the 

 Ancient Lake Dwellers of Switzerland, or of the Pile and Platform 

 Builders of the Gulf of Maracaibo or the Bayous of the Orinoco in 

 Venezuela. 



I, therefore, did not hesitate to assure Dr. Pepper and Col. Durnford 

 of my opinion that the find to which he had drawn our attention would,, 

 if fully enough followed up, lead to the most important archaeological 

 discovery yet made on any of our coasts. Dr. Pepper also attached great 

 significance to the find. He straightway expressed the wish, indeed, that 

 in the interest of the Department he represented, a reconnaissance of the 

 place, as well as of the surrounding region, might immediately be under- 

 taken, with a view to still further explorations another year, in case my 

 conclusions as to the typical nature of the field were thcrcb_v borne out. 

 As Mr. Mercer was loath to leave other and pressing work, I eagerly 

 volunteered — liealth being equal and consent of my Director in the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, Major J. W. Powell, being granted — to 



