Cushi-ng.] dob [Nov. 6, 



turn over in our excavations, I would be permitted to retain all objects 

 discovered, and if desirable, to exploit the little triangular " Court of the 

 Pile Dwellers" from border to border. It lay, as I have said, close 

 alongside the sea-wall at the southwestern edge of the key and just 

 below a succession of shell benches, themselves formerly abandoned 

 and filled-up courts of a similar character. The side opposite the sea- 

 wall, that is on the east, was formed by an extended ridge — scarcely 

 less high than the sea-wall itself, and likewise composed of well-com- 

 pacted shells. Around the upper end, and down the outer side of this 

 ridge, led— as indicated in plan, Plate XXXI — an inlet canal, bordered 

 by similar ridges beyond, and joined by an outlet canal at the lower 

 end — that continued through various low-banked enclosures in the man- 

 grove swamps toward the south, quite down to the terminus of the sea- 

 wall itself. 



The entire court was thickly overgrown with mangrove trees, under- 

 neath which also thickly grew, to a uniform height of six or eight inches, 

 bright green aquatic weeds and mangrove shoots. Since the interior of 

 this artificial and filled-up bayou was still not above the level of the 

 surrounding tide-swept mangrove swamps through which the canals led, 

 it lay almost continually under water, and its excavation looked at first 

 to be almost impossible, and at best a most formidable undertaking. It 

 would be necessary to cut away and uproot the mangroves and in some 

 way to remove the water that filled to overflowing the excavations which 

 had formerly been made, and thus covered the entire court. To begin, I 

 had a few of the trees cleared away fi'om the outer and southwesterly cor- 

 ner, and opposite my old excavation in sections 34, 44, had a trench cut 

 through the sea-wall to as great a depth as possible without letting water 

 in from the bay outside. I then had a long trough of ship planks con- 

 structed and placed on stakes driven deep into the muck bed, so that one 

 end rested over the excavation and the other, lower end, in the mouth of 

 the sluice-way through the sea-wall. Then laying heavy planks over the 

 boggy surface to furnish foothold for the men, I set them at work baling 

 out the old excavation with buckets. It was at first like trying to bale 

 out the sea itself, for water flowed in as fast as taken out ; but after two or 

 three hours of steady work, it began to lower, not only in the excavation, 

 but over the entire court, and toward evening it became possible to even 

 begin the extension of this original excavation in the direction of the 

 cleared corner of the court. On the following morning, however, there 

 was almost as much water in the excavation thus enlarged, and else- 

 where, as on the previous day ; but it was much sooner disposed of by 

 baling and by the banking up of the place last excavated, and I soon 

 found that by thus proceeding each morning for a couple of liours more 

 or less, the water could be kept sufficiently low to enable us, working in 

 sections, or bins as it were (roughly corresponding to tliose sliown in the 

 plan), to excavate the entire place. Yet, even thus, mucii of our search 

 in the lower depths had to be made merely by feeling with the fingers. 



