189G.] oho [Gushing. 



Other of these flat-bottomed little toy boats was much sharper and higher 

 at the stem and stern, had very low gunwales, and was generally narrower 

 in proportion to its length, and enlarged would have been admirably 

 adapted to swift tidal currents, or to the running of low breakers. Yet 

 another looked like a clumsy craft for the bearing over shoals of heavy 

 loads or burdens. It was comparatively wide, and its ends also quite 

 broad. All except one of these, I observed, were decorated at one 

 end or both, with the same sort of semilunar or disc-like devices, that 

 were observable on the trays — as may be seen by an examination of 

 Fig, 6, PI. XXXII. Two others of the toy canoes (one of which 

 is here figured as just referred to) were not more than three inches broad 

 by nearly two feet in length, gracefully and slenderly formed, tapered 

 cleanly toward the forward ends, which were high and very narrow, yet 

 square at the sterns, which were also high. We found them almost in 

 juxtaposition near the midmost of the western benches. Little sticks 

 and slight shreds of twisted bark were lying aci'oss them and indicated 

 to me that they had once been lashed together, and, as a more finished 

 and broken spar-like shaft lay near bj% I was inclined to believe that 

 they represented the sea-going craft of the ancient people here ; that the 

 vessels in which these people had navigated the high seas had been made 

 double — of canoes lashed together, catamaran fashion — and propelled not 

 only with paddles, but also, perhaps, by means of sails, made probably 

 from the thin two-ply kind of bark matting I have before described, of 

 which there were abundant traces near the midchannel, associated with 

 cordage and with a beautifully regular, much worn and polished spar. 

 At any rate, the natives of these South Florida seas and of the West 

 Indies are mentioned by early writers as having navigated fearlessly 

 in their cypress canoes; as having sometimes crossed the Gulf itself, 

 and as having used in these long cruises sails of some simple sort. 

 Jonathan Dickinson, in his quaint volume entitled God's Protecting Prom- 

 dence Man's Surest Help and Defence, etc. — one of the first books pub- 

 lished in this city, by the way — narrates how, just two hundred years 

 ago, he and his companion voyagers were shipwrecked on the Florida 

 Gulf shore. He clearly describes such a double canoe as we found the 

 toy remains of, when he tells how a Cacique, into whose hands they fell, 

 went to wrest back the plunder that had been taken from them by 

 earlier captors. The Cacique — to quote the author freely — came home in 

 great state He was nearly nude and triumphantly painted red, and 

 sitting cross-legged on their ship's chest, that stood on a platform midway 

 over tico canoes lashed together with -poles. He maintained a fierce ex- 

 pression of countenance and looked neither to the left nor to the right, 

 but merely exclaimed " wow " when they greeted him from the shore ; 

 and, after landing, proceeded — the author adds rather ruefully — to ap- 

 propriate the contents of the chest to himself. 



Two tackle-blocks, real prehistoric pulleys, that we found, may have 

 pertained to such canoes as these. Each was three inches long, oval, 



