54 ABBOTT— ARCH.^OLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 



undisturbed accumulation. Through every woodland tract there 

 trickles a little brook, and often a stream of considerable width and 

 depth broke the monotony of a forest floor. These would neces- 

 sarily prevent a uniform accumulation of each season's foliage, a 

 large proportion being carried away, for I have often seen currents 

 of air lift and bear away the dead leaves in a forest and deposit them 

 far from the trees from which they fell. Matted dead leaves are 

 bulky, but when such leaves have lost their identity and become 

 dust, the result is an addition to the accumulating soil not thicker 

 than a sheet of tissue paper. Adding to this the decay of fallen 

 tree trunks, we must still admit that the growth of a forest's black 

 soil is a matter of centuries ; that it is one of Nature's slow processes. 

 It was on this floor that the Lenni Lenape dwelt, and for how many 

 generations I think no one will presume to deal in figures. He came 

 and little do we know of his career, save that it was not one of such 

 bestial savagery as has been asserted. The variety of artifacts 

 fashioned by him is evidence of this. 



When, in 1678-80, the English settlers began in grim earnest 

 to convert the wilderness into a garden, or destroy beauty in the 

 interests of utility, the forest floor began rapidly to disappear. 

 Where the surface is undulating, and I have seen but slight acreage 

 that might be called " a dead level," the forest floor, when exposed 

 to the weather, is washed or blown off and not worked or washed 

 into the underlying sand. The result of rain, if not violent, is to 

 compact sand and steadily lessen its penetrability. This leads us to 

 a consideration of the suggestion, so frequently made, of the in- 

 trusion of objects from the surface: that a grooved axe or polished 

 celt or broken pot or other distinctly " Indian " possession had by 

 chance sunk from the surface where it was lost or intentionally 

 left and reached to a considerable depth in the yellow sands be- 

 neath and since its passage, all trace of the track of its intrusion 

 become obliterated. Such disturbance always leaves behind it in- 

 eradicable traces. The yellow sands, whether laid down by wind or 

 water action, become arranged in such a way that, if disturbed, no 

 rearrangement on the same lines is practicable. Those who have 

 trenched in such deposits intelligently known instantly when a spot 

 has been disturbed since the original deposition. Nature has not 



