888 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY, 



mounds has a height of 25 feet, length of base 225 feet, and width of 

 175 feet ; its oval, truncated top is about 35 by 70 feet ; its direction 

 lengthwise is north 12 degrees west; it has a graded way on the east 

 side, and was originally faced with stone; over one hundred wagon- 

 loads have been taken from it and used in walling drains. 



The earth-work and mounds extend on to the ridge to within one- 

 fourth of a mile of the flaking ground on the bluff, thus connecting all 

 these works. On the spurs near the Sabine are cemeteries and sepul- 

 chral mounds, from which many human bones have been turned out by 

 the plow^ I bave opened several of the mounds, one of which, from a 

 mechanical point of view, possessed great interest, for the primary inter- 

 ment over which it was raised was that of a worker in stone; and who 

 knows but he may have been at a time the master mechanic or chief super- 

 intendent of the great flint works ? The center of his mound was paved 

 with the valves of the muscle shells of the Sabine, laid on the levelled 

 surfjice of the natural soil in concentric rings, with the convex sides up. 

 This shell pavement was about 7 feet in diameter; on its center was a 

 pillow composed of twenty-seven pebble rub-stones of various grit and 

 diflerently shaped edges. On these the skull was laid on its side ; it was 

 far gone in decay and crushed out of shape ; the teeth much worn ; the 

 position of the large bones that escaped decay showed the man had been 

 bent, bringing his knees near his chin, and laid on his side. He was a man 

 of massive frame; the femur measured 19 inches and the tibia 15 J inches 

 long. Close to the crown of his head stood a rude clay vessel, badly 

 broken; in front of the skull, on the rub stone pillow, a gorget, finished 

 with the exception of drilling hole for suspending it, on which lay a 

 plumb-bob, a stag's tine scraped to a point; this broke to pieces on 

 removing it. There were some bone splints, two canine teeth of a 

 wolf, some pieces of galena, one crystal of mica one-half inch thick (the 

 plates had not been parted), a few chert flakes, and a single finished 

 arrow-point: on the shell floor of the mound, near its outer edge, one 

 of the mysterious cui^-stones, with three cups on one side and four on 

 the other. I could not see that it had been placed with any reference to 

 the center skeleton, but close to it, on the shell floor, lay a. small-sized 

 skull in a better state of preservation than the central one. A large hole 

 in the back of it showed it had been crushed in, the broken portions 

 either having been removed or decayed. Close to it lay the deadly 

 slingstone, of roughly shaped cl\ert. The decayed and broken bones 

 of this skeleton had been thrown out in removing the earth from the 

 shell floor, so that Its position could not be accurately ascertained, 

 though from portions of bone still remaining after the skull was dis- 

 covered it was evident that the entire skeleton lay on the shell floor, 

 and close to the central one, and was no doubt a primary interment. 



Among these earth-works, where the densest aboriginal population 

 have left their marks, stands a farm house and its outbuildings, with 

 its garden on a pre-historic cemetery. From this point radiated the 



