Gushing.] 64:Z [Nov. 6, 



merits in the white, bare stretches of sand flats. Suffice it, if I say, that 

 this settlement had an average width of a quarter of a mile, and extended 

 along the shore of Pine Island — that is from north to south — more than 

 three-quarters of a mile ; that its high-built portions alone, including of 

 course, the five water courts, covered an area of not less than seven tj'- 

 five or eighty acres. The inner courts were all, except one, furnished 

 with outlets that had originally opened through short canals into the strait 

 that had separated the key from the main island. The single exception 

 referred to was notable. The midmost of these inner courts, which was 

 too low to be made use of as a garden, and was therefore still overgrown 

 with enormous mangrove, button-wood and other trees, was, or had been, 

 connected with the sea by a canal that led into it between two long, 

 very high shell elevations, which flanked it on either side of the western 

 end. From the opposite end of the court another canal led directly 

 eastward into the pine lands. JSTot to pause with a further account of this 

 greatest, except one, of all the monuments of the ancient key builders on 

 the Florida coast, save to say that in the court of the canals I found the 

 finest and best preserved relics I had j^et discovered, I will only describe 

 this landward canal and the gigantic mounds and other inland works to 

 which it led. It extended in a straight line almost due eastwardly across 

 the sand flats, that were, at this point, very narrow, and heavily over- 

 grown with canebrakes and high grasses ; while beyond, palmettos and 

 yuccas covered the entire plain far into the pine-lands. It was uniformly 

 al)out thirty feet wide, and though of course now much tilled, especi- 

 ally between the shell-made levees that crossed the flats, it still main- 

 tained an even depth of between five and six feet. A few yards beyond 

 where it entered the higher level of the pine lands, there was a little 

 outlet from its southern side, which led straight to what had been an 

 enormous artificial pond or oval lake, that was still so boggy I could 

 not traverse it. From the opposite end of this lake, in turn, led for 

 nearly a quarter of a mile further, in a generally southeastern direction, 

 but not in a straight line, another and lesser canal. It terminated in 

 another artificial lake, that extended east and west, and in the middle of 

 this stood, crosswise, a gigantic and shapely mound. This mound 

 was oval in outline, fifty-eight feet high, some three hundred and 

 seventy-five feet in length and a little more than one hundred and fifty 

 feet in the width at its base. A graded way wound around it spirally 

 from the southern base to the summit, which was comparatively narrow, 

 but long and level like the tops of the shell mounds on the keys. As- 

 cending this mound, I found that it had been built up of sand and thin 

 strata of sea-shells alternately, and that to the presence of these strata 

 of shells had been due, probably, the remarkable preservation of its 

 form. Potsherds of fine quality, chalky remains of human bones, 

 broken shell ladles — their bottoms significantly punctured — all demon - 

 tnitud the fact that this mound, which obviously had been used as the 

 foundation of a temple structure, had also served as a place of burial. 



