1896.] d4d [Gushing. 



Due northeast from it, half a mile farther in, might be seen another 

 and even larger mound, double, not single-crested, like this The great 

 canal, a branch of which opened mto the encircling lake of this mound 

 also, led on directly past it, and could be plainly traced, even from this 

 distance, through the palmetto-covered plain beyond. Again, in a 

 southwest direction, not quite so far away, I could discern among the 

 scattered pines a hummock, comparatively low and small, but regular 

 and overgrown thickly with palmettos and brambles. It, too, proved 

 to be a mound, mostly of shell, but probably built for burial purposes, 

 yet furnished like these two larger ones, with a contiguous lake or pond 

 hole, from which also led a slight canal to the near-by sand flats, 

 lieturning to the greater canal and following it out to the point of its 

 connection with the lake of the double mound, I found that the eastern 

 end of this lake was large, rather square than round, and that it formed 

 really a water-court fronting the mound and more or less surrounded 

 originally with embankments — of sand chiefly — but like the characteristic 

 shell embankments of the keys in form, as if, indeed, made purposely to 

 resemble them. From this excavated lake-court, a graded way had also 

 once led up the eastern side of the double mound, its terminus forming, 

 in fact, the saddle between its two summits — that reached an altitude of 

 more than sixty-three feet. In all these regards it exactly resembled one of 

 the great shell foundations — crowning mounds and all — of the outer keys, 

 and I could not but be impressed with the apparent significance of this, es- 

 pecially as I found by slight excavation that the mound had been com- 

 posed, like the other, of shell strata in part, and that it was erected verit- 

 ably as a foundation, since there was no evidence that it had been used to 

 any great extent as a burial place. Moreover, the great canal, turning a 

 little to the southeast, led on again in a straight line into the interior. I 

 followed it for more than a mile, and, although it lessened in width, it 

 was distinctly traceable still beyond, and I was told that it extended 

 quite across the island to similar works and shell elevations on the 

 other side. I later learned that the canal and mounds on Naples Island 

 were not unlike these, although smaller, and that equally gigantic 

 works occurred far up the great rivers of the coast, as far up the Caloo- 

 sahatchee, for instance, as Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Every- 1 

 where, too, these inland works resembled, with their surroundings — | 

 embankments, court or bayou-like lakes, canals, graded ways, etc — the| 

 works of the keys. And I have been led to infer that they actually rep- 

 resent the first stage of a later and inland phase of key-dweller modes of 

 building, and furnish a hint that, perhaps not only other inland mounds 

 of Florida, but also the great and regular mounds and other earth-works 

 occurring in the lowlands of our Southern and Middle Western States, 

 and celebrated as the remains of the so-called mound-builders, may like- 

 wise also be traced, if not to this beginning, at least to a similar begin- 

 ning in some seashore and marshland environment, I shall therefore 

 recur to the subject specifically in later paragraphs. 



