Gushing] d4o [Xov. 6. 



interspersed with deep inner courts, and widely surrounded with en- 

 closures tliat were threaded by broad, far-reaching canals, so that this 

 one key included an area of quite two hundred acres, within which area 

 may be reckoned only such surface as had been actually reclaimed by 

 the ancient key builders from this inland or shore-land sea. I was told 

 by Mrs. Johnson, wife of the owner of the place, to whom good Mrs. Ellis 

 had kindly given me a characteristic letter of introduction, that burial 

 mounds, not unlike the one on the Ellis place, but larger, occurred in the 

 depths of the wide mangrove swamps that lay below towards the main- 

 land, and that here on the heights, many Spanish relics had been found — 

 Venetian beads, scraps of sheet copper, small ornaments of gold and 

 silver, and a copper-gilt locket. She showed me this. It contained a 

 faded portrait, and a still more faded letter, written on yellow parchment, 

 apparently from some Spanish Grandee of about two hundred years ago 

 to a resident colonist of that time. 



Whether these relics indicated tliat here the ancient key dwellers or 

 their mixed descendants had lingered on into early historic times, and 

 that the Mission that these things betokened, had been established among 

 them, or among alien successors, could not, of course, be determined ; 

 but around the lower courts, and on the old garden terraces, I found 

 abundant specimens of shell and coarse pottery, characteristic of the key 

 dwellers proper who had ancientlj" built this island, and since returning 

 I have carefully examined an interesting series of both kinds of relics 

 gathered here by your fellow-member. Mr. Joseph Wilcox, Avhich offer 

 even better evidence of this, and are now I am happy to say preserved 

 in the University museum. 



I made only a brief stop at Na^jles City. Captain Large of that 

 place, to whom I bore a letter of introduction, received me most 

 courteously, and showed me, nearby, the mouth of the ancient canal, of 

 which I had already heard from Col. Durnford. Except that it once 

 opened in directly from the Gulf and had evidently been designed as a 

 canoe pass across the island, it was in many respects like the one I had 

 examined on Pine Island, although deeper and at the same time nar- 

 rower. I was told by. Captain Large that like mounds, too, occurred 

 near its outlet on the farther side, and that it ter;ninated in front of 

 some ancient shell works out in the inner bay beyond, similar, I judged, 

 to those at Battey's Landing. 



From Naples City the sail to Marco was short ; fen- squalls were rising 

 out over the Gulf, making its opalescent waters tumultuous and mag- 

 nificent, but to my sailors, terrible, driving us now and anon furiously 

 fast through the rising billows, what though our sails were reefed low. 

 Big Marco Pass opened tortuously between two islands of sand ; the 

 northern one narrow, long and straight, backed by mangrove swamps ; 

 the southern one broad, generally flat but undulating, and covered with 

 tall, lank grasses, scattered, scrubby trees, and stately palmettos. The 

 mangrove swamps, sundered by numerous inlets on tiie one side, this 



