Cushiug.] «^^-' [Nov. G, 



ruddy fingers, bended like the legs of centipedes — I dimly beheld, in the 

 sombre depths of this sunless jungle of the waters, a long, nearly 

 straight, but ruinous embankment of piled-up conch-shells. Beyond it 

 were to be seen — as in the illustration given on Plate XXVII, — other 

 banks, less high, not always regular, but forming a maze of distinct en- 

 closures of various sizes and outlines, nearlj^ all of them open a little at 

 either end or at opposite sides, as if for outlet and inlet. 



Threading this zone of boggy bins, and leading in toward a more 

 central point, were here and there open ways like channels. They 

 were formed by parallel ridges of shells, increasing in height toward the 

 interior, until at last they merged into a steep, somewhat extended 

 bench, also of shells, and flat on the top like a platform. Here, of 

 course, at the foot of the platform, the channel ended, in a slightly 

 broadened cove like a landing place ; but a graded depression or patii- 

 way ascended from it and crossed this bench or platform, leading to, 

 and in turn climbing, over, or rather through, another and higher plat- 

 form a slight distance beyond. In places off to the side on either hand 

 were still more of these platforms, rising terrace-like, but very irregu- 

 larly, from the enclosures below to the foundations of great, level-top- 

 ped mounds, which, like worn-out, elongated and truncated pyramids, 

 loftily and imposingly crowned the whole, some of them to a height of 

 nearly thirty feet above the encircling sea. 



All this was not by any means plain at first. Except for mere patches 

 a few feet in width, here and there along the steepest slopes, these ele- 

 vations, and especially the terraces and platforms above the first series, 

 were almost completely shrouded from view under net only a stunted 

 forest of mulberry, papaya, mastich, iron-wood, button-wood, laurel, 

 live oak and other gnarly kinds of trees, mostly evergreen, and all over- 

 run and bound fast together from top to bottom by leafy, tough and 

 thorny vines, and thong-like clinging creepers, but also by a rank tan- 

 gle below, of grasses, weeds, brambles, cacti, bristling Spanish bayo- 

 nets and huge spike-leaved century plants, their tall sere flower stalks 

 of former years standing bare and aslant, like spars of storm-beached 

 shipping above this tumultuous sea of verdure. 



The utmost heights were, in places, freer ; but even there, grew weeds 

 and creepers and bushes, not a few, and overtopping them all, some of 

 the most fantastic of trees — the trees par excellence of the heights of 

 these ancient keys, the so-called gumbo limbos or West Indian birches — 

 bare, skinny, livid, monstrous and crooked of limb, and, compared with 

 surrounding growth, gigantic. To the topmost branches of these weird- 

 looking trees, brilliant red grosbeaks came and went as I climbed. Long 

 ere I saw them, I could hear them trilling, in plaintive flute-like strains, 

 to mates in far-away trees, perhaps on other groups of mounds — whence 

 at least answers like faint echoes of these nearer songs came lonesomely 

 calling back as though across void hollows. 



The bare patches along the ascents to the mounds were, like the 



