Gushing.] OO^ [Xov. 6, 



things found their way into it, and to determine also many other fea- 

 tures of the place, interesting as details and important too, as substanti- 

 ating various inferences I have ventured to give above. But as a careful 

 study of the collections themselves repeats to a great extent this story 

 of our field observations, I will make haste to present a descriptive 

 account of the various classes of these. 



Anciekt Artifacts from the Court of the Pile Dwellers. 



Piles, Timbers, etc. — None of the piles found by us exceeded six and 

 a half feet in length. Indeed, the greater number of them were less 

 than three and a half feet long. These shorter piles were nearly always 

 made of palmetto wood, were not round, but broad, or somewhat flat- 

 tened, although the edges were rounded. They were tapered toward the 

 bottom and bluntly pointed, rudely squared or hollowed out at the tops 

 as though to support round, horizontal timbers ; and they were bored or 

 notched slantingly here and there through the edges, as though for the 

 reception of rounded braces or cross-stays of poles or saplings, abundant 

 pieces of which were found. Some of the piles were worn at the points 

 or lower ends, as though they had rested upon, but had not been driven 

 into, the solid shell and clay-marl benches. They had apparently, on 

 the contrary, been quite rigidly fastened to the horizontal timbers or 

 frameworks of the quays or scatfolds they held up — by means of the staj'^- 

 sticks — like pegs or pointed feet, so that as long as the water remained 

 low, they would support these house scaffolds above it, as well as if 

 driven into the benches, but when the waters rose, the entire structures 

 would also slightly rise, or at any rate not be violently wrenched from 

 their supports, as would inevitably have been the case had these been 

 firmly fixed below. The longer piles were, on the contrary, round. 

 They were somewhat smaller, quite smoothly finished, and had been, if 

 one might judge by their more pointed and yet roughened or frayed 

 appearance at both ends, actualh' driven into the bottom. It therefore 

 appeared to me that they had been made so as to be thus driven into 

 the edges of the benches at either side of the peg-supported platforms, 

 in order to keep these from swerving in case an unusual rise in the 

 waters caused them to float. There were other pieces equally long, but 

 broken off near their points. They w^ere slightly grooved .at the upper 

 ends and tied around with thick, well-twisted ropes or cabies made of 

 cypress bark and palmetto fibre, as though they had served as mooring- 

 posts, probably for the further securing of the ends of the partially 

 movable platforms — else they had not been so violently wrenched as to 

 break them at the points — for some of them were more than four inches 

 in diameter, and were made of tough mangrove and buttonwood or iron- 

 wood. The side-posts or stay-stakes were, on the contrary, of spruce 

 or pine, and were, as I have said, finished to a nicety, as though to 

 offer no resistance to the rise and fall of the big, partially floating quays 

 between them. Around the great log or sill of cypress, mentioned as. 



