Cushin,?.] «j40 [Xov. 6, 



an open way or channel to tlie sea for canoes. It became evident that 

 it had been this, for we were able to excavate through vegetal muck 

 and other accumulated debris to a depth of more than four feet, although 

 mucli inconvenienced hj intlowing water. I thus found that the shell- 

 banks had not only been built up with a considerable degree of regular- 

 ity, but that, well defined as these ridges were, the portions of them visi- 

 ble above the muck wei'e merely their crests. The excavation was made 

 near what may thus be regarded as having formed the original landing, 

 and in it we found a considerable number of quite well-preserved relics, 

 similar to those I had found in the court on Josselyn's key. Another 

 excavation made near the termination of the two embankments, how- 

 ever, revealed fewer artificial remains, other than blackened and water- 

 worn sherds of pottery. But I found that here also, the artificial banks 

 or walls, so to call them, had been built up with equal regularity, almost 

 vertically, from a depth of between four and five feet. In extending 

 this excavation, an interesting feature of the original foundations of 

 these outworks was revealed. It consisted of a kind of shell breccia 

 formed of the first layers of shells that had been placed there — that 

 Avere composed of conchs, some of which had been' driven or wedged, 

 smaller ends first, into the original reef or bar, and had apparentl}" been 

 further solidified by a filling or packing in of tough clay-like marl, now 

 so indurated that shell, sherds of pottery, and here and there bits of bone 

 and charcoal formed, with it, a solid mass well progressed toward fossili- 

 zation. Indeed, wheu large fragments of this time-hardened cement were 

 pried up and broken open, the shell, sherds of pottery and bones con- 

 tained in them appeared already like fossils. I found by making yet other 

 excavations in the contiguous and almost untraceable courts or enclos- 

 ures, that they, too, had been built up from an equal depth, as though to 

 serve rather as fish-pounds than as breakwaters or as courts to the quays 

 and houses, for the crests of these enclosures so slightly protruded above 

 the surface of the muck and weedy carpeting of the mangrove swamp in 

 Avhich they occurred, that I had at first quite fiiiled to observe them. Thus 

 it appeared that this half-enclosed swamp, no less than the swamps sur- 

 rounding the first key I had examined, contained similar sorts of enclo- 

 sures, only these had been lower originally, or else had since been more 

 filled in with muck, vegetal growth and tide-wash. The low-bordered 

 terrace or garden plot, the margin of which faced this swamp within 

 the northern end of the key, was wide and comparatively level, except 

 that in one or two places toward the slopes of the terraces next above it, 

 there occurred in it the circular lioles I have mentioned as basins, one 

 of which looked almost like a well. The like of these I later encountered 

 on many others of the keys, and they seemed to be catch-basins for rain or 

 places for water storage, artificial (.'cnotes, as it were, like the spring-holes 

 or sink-holes on the mainland aud in Yucatan. Moreover, the surround- 

 ing plot, like the terraces at the lower end of tlie ke3^ and like those I 

 had found on the first island I had explored, was scantily supplied with 



