Cashing ] OO^ [Xov. 6, 



Pottery andUtensils. — A few examples of pottery were discovered lying 

 always on or near the bottom, and with one exception invariably broken. 

 All of these vessels, notwithstanding the fact that some of them had their 

 rims more or less decorated, showed evidence of having been used as 

 cooking bowls or pots. Associated with them were household utensils — 

 spoons made from bivalves, ladles made from the greater halves of hol- 

 lowed-out well-grown conch shells ; and cups, bowls, trays and mortars 

 of wood. These latter were in greatest variety and abundance. They 

 ranged in size from little hemispherical bowls or cups two and a half or 

 three inches in diameter, to great cypress tubs more than two feet in 

 depth, tapering, flat-bottomed, and correspondingly wide at the tops. 

 The smaller mortar-cups were marvels of beauty and finish as a rule, 

 and lying near them and sometimes even within them, were still found 

 their appropriate pestles or crushers — as is shown in Fig. 5, PI. 

 XXXIY. The smaller mortars and pestles, like the one illustrated, 

 seemed to have been personal property, as though they had belonged to 

 individuals and had been used in the crushing of berries and tubers, 

 and perhaps cunti-root ; as well as in other ways, that is, in the service, 

 rather than merely in the general preparation, of food. 



The trays were also very numerous and exceedingly interesting ; 

 comparatively shallow, oval in outline and varying from a length of six 

 and a half or seven inches and a width of four or five inches, to a length 

 of not less than five feet and a width of quite two feet. The ends of 

 these trays were narrowed and truncated to form handles, the upper 

 faces of which were usually decorated with neatly cut-in disc like or 

 semilunar figures or depressions. Looking at the whole series of them 

 secured by us — no fewer than thirty in all — I was impressed with their 

 general resemblance to canoes, their almost obvious derivation from such, 

 as though through a sort of technologic inheritance they had descended 

 from the vessels which had brought not only the first food, and the first 

 supplies of water, to these outlying keys, but also the first dwellers 

 thereon as well. 



Navigating Apparatus and Fishing Gear. — This inference was 

 strengthened by the discovery here and there of actual toy canoes. 

 That they had been designed as toys was evident from the fact that 

 some were not only well finished, but considerably worn by use. 

 There were six or seven of these, and while they generally con- 

 formed to a single type, that is the dugout, they ditfered very materially 

 in detail. Three of them were comparatively tiat-bottomed. One, about 

 five inches in length by two in breadth of beam and an inch in depth, 

 was shaped precisely like a neat punt or flat -bottomed row boat — Fig. 7, 

 PI. XXXII. Both ends were somewhat squared, but the stern was wider 

 than the prow, and above the stern was a little protuberance, indicating 

 that such had been used in guiding, and perhaps as well in sculling, little 

 light draught vessels like this, obviously designed, my sailors thought, for 

 the navigation of shallow streams, inlets, bayous, and tlie ciuials. An- 



