1896.] OOO [Gushing. 



ridges below, built up wholly of shells, great conch-shells chiefl}% black- 

 ened by exposure for ages ; and ringing like thin potsherds when dis- 

 turbed even by the light feet of the raccoons and little dusky brown rab- 

 bits that now and then scuttled across them from covert to covert and 

 that seemed to be, with the ever-present grosbeaks above, and with 

 many lizards and some few rattlesnakes and other reptiles below, the 

 principal dwellers on these lonely keys — if swarming insects may be left 

 unnamed ! 



But everywhere else it was necessary to cut and tear the way step by 

 step. "Wherever thus revealed, the surface below, like the bare spaces 

 themselves, proved to be also of shells, smaller or much broken on the 

 levels and gentler slopes, and mingled with scant black mold on the 

 wider terraces, as though these had been formed with a view to cultiva- 

 tion and supplied with soil from the rich muck beds below. Here also 

 occurred occasional potsherds and manj'^ worn valves of gigantic clams 

 and whorls of huge univalves that appeared to have been used as hoes 

 and picks or other digging tools, and this again suggested the idea that 

 at least the wider terraces — many of which proved to be not level, but 

 filled with basin -shaped depressions or bordered by retaining walls — had 

 been used as garden plats, some, perhaps, as drainage basins. But the 

 margins of these, whether raised or not, and the edges of even the lesser 

 terraces, the sides of the graded ways leading up to or through them, 

 and especially the slopes of the greater mounds, were all of unmixed 

 shell, in which, as on the barren patches, enormous nearly equal-sized 

 whelks or conch-shells prevailed. 



Such various features, seen one by one, impressed me more and more 

 forcibly, as indicating general design — a structural origin of at least the 

 enormous accumulations of shell I was so slowly and painfully travers- 

 ing, if not, indeed, of the entire key or islet. Still, my mind was not, 

 perhaps, wholly disabused of the prevalent opinion that these and like 

 accumulations on capes of the neighboring mainland were primarily stu- 

 pendous shell heaps, chiefly the undistributed refuse remaining from ages 

 of intermittent al)original occupation, until I had scaled the topmost of 

 the platforms. Then I could see that the vast pile on which I stood, 

 and of which the terraces I had climbed were, in a sense, irregular stages, 

 formed in reality a single, prodigious elbow-shaped foundation, crowned 

 at its bend by a definite group of lofty, narrow and elongated mounds, 

 that stretched fan-like across its summit like the thumb and four fingers 

 of a mighty outspread hand. Beyond, moreover, were other great 

 foundations, bearing aloft still other groups of mounds, their declivities 

 thicklj' overgrown, but their summits betokened by the bare branches 

 of gumbo limbos, whence had come, no doubt, the lone-sounding songs 

 of the grosbeaks. Thej' stood, these other foundations, like the sun- 

 dered ramparts of some vast and ruined fortress along one side and across 

 the farther end of a deep open space or quadrangular court more than 

 an acre in extent, level and as closely covered with mangroves and 



