189o.] 363 [Cashing. 



lying along the edge of the northern bench (it was uniformly nine 

 inches in diameter, fourteen feet eleven inches in length, carefully 

 shaved to shape and finished evidently with shark-tooth blades and shell 

 scrapers, and was moreover, like the piles, socketed and notched or 

 bored along its sides) were many of these piles, both short and long; 

 and overlying the sill, as well as on either side of it, I found abundant 

 broken timbers, poles, and traces of wattled cane matting as well as 

 quantities of interlaced or latticed saplings — laths evidently, for they 

 seemed to have been plastered with a clay and ash cement — and quantities 

 also of yellow marsh-grass thatch, some of it alluringly fresh, other 

 portions burnt to black masses of cinder. Here and elsewhere along 

 the edges of the benches occurred fire-hardened cement or mud hearth- 

 plastering, mingled with ashes and charcoal — which indeed occurred 

 more or less abundantly everywhere, together with refuse, consisting 

 not only of broken and sometimes scorched animal bones and shells, 

 but also of tlie charred remains of vegetable and fruit foods. Among 

 these remains and the more artificial objects that were associated with 

 them we continually encountered incipient or unfinished pieces — 

 blocked-out trays or toy canoes, untrimmed adze and axe handles, 

 uncompleted tablets, etc., and all this evidenced to me that the place 

 was indeed a site of former daily occupation. 



Furniture, etc. — Here and there were found curious wooden seats — 

 more or less like ancient Antillean stools, as may be seen in Fig. 

 7, PI. XXXIV — flat slabs of wood from a foot to more than 

 two feet in length, slightly liollowed on top from end to end 

 as well as from side to side, with rounded bottoms and substan- 

 tial, prong-like pairs of feet near either end, from two to three 

 inches long. Some of these stools had the feet level ; others, so spread 

 and beveled that they would exactly fit the hollow bottoms of canoes. 

 Others still were smaller than those I have mentioned, so diminutive, in 

 fact, that they could have served no purpose else, it seemed to me, 

 than that of head-rests or pillow-supports. We found, indeed, although 

 we were unable to preserve any of them, examples of what might have 

 been the pillows used in connection witli these rests. They were taper- 

 ingly cylindrical, made of fine rushes, and showed a continuous four-ply 

 plat, so that, like cassava strainers, they were flexible and compressible, 

 yet springy, and they had probably been filled with Florida moss or 

 deer hair, which filling had, however, long since disappeared save for a 

 mushy residuum. Portions of mats, some thick, as though for use as rugs, 

 others enveloping various objects, and others still of shredded bark in 

 strips so thin and flat and closely platted that they might well have 

 served as sails, were frequently discovered. Yet except for masses of 

 the peat or mud upon which tlie remains of this matting lay and which 

 therefore when dry showed traces of its beautifully and variously formed 

 plies, naught of them could be preserved. It was obvious, however, 

 that the peoples who had inhabited the court understood well, not only 

 platting, but weaving and basketry-making too. 



PROC. AMER. PHII.OS. SOC. XXXV. 153. 2 T. PRINTED JUNE 5, 1897. 



