862 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



ered with a growth similar to that around it, and so dense and tangled 

 is the growth of vines, briers, and bushes upon it that it is difficult 

 either to measure or explore it. Its estimated height is 25 feet, its 

 length 250 feet, and its width 135 feet. The measurements were taken 

 along the top, which is nearly level ; of course, the base is much greater. 

 The sides are very steep, and on the south side is a sloping roadvfay 

 leading to the top. 



Many excavations have been made from time to time by curiosity- 

 seekers, and during the civil war Dr. Sandrum, of Milton, Fla., who 

 belonged to the company which was stationed at the shell fort, made ex- 

 plorations through a period of eleven months. I cannot learn that any- 

 thing of importance has been found excepting human bones in the shell 

 stratum beneath the sand. Dr. S. S. Forbes, of Milton, also visited this 

 mound in company with some gentlemen from the North, and made sev- 

 eral large excavations in it. He reports the finding of human bones in 

 the shell stratum, but the skulls were so decayed that preservation was 

 not possible. Dr. Forbes also obtained several clay figures representing 

 human and animal heads, some of which he kindly gave to the National 

 Museum. The old cuttings made by former seekers were explored, and 

 several new ones made, with but little reward in the way of relics ex- 

 cepting human bones and teeth on the shell stratum, but not in it. 



The top stratum of this mound is composed of sand to a depth of 5 

 feet ; beneath this is a layer of shell from 2 to 3 feet in thickness. On 

 the latter, but not in it, human bones were found, thus indicating that 

 the bodies were deposited on the shells and covered with sand. A criti- 

 cal examination of the shell stratum was made, and from the evidence 

 it afforded the conclusion was reached that the mound was originally 

 much lower, and that the shell deposit was an accumulation of kitchen 

 refuse ; that it was for a time a place of residence and used as a place 

 of burial, and afterwards that the stratum of sand was added and the 

 place once more fitted for residence. 



The facts which favor this view are, first, that the shell stratum con- 

 tains the bones of bears, deer, birds, turtles, and fishes, the usual accom- 

 paniments of Indian feasting, while the upper and lower stratums are 

 composed of clean sand ; second, that the depth of these human remains 

 in the earth is unusual and not at all in keeping with what we already 

 have observed in Indian burials ; and lastly, the pits or excavations 

 from which the earth used in forming the mound was taken show in a 

 very marked manner that the material was not all removed at the same 

 time, some being mere depressions in the soil, while others are sharply 

 defined and comparatively recent. 



The formation of this mound being by a series of additions to the 

 original work may prove a key to the construction of many of the larger 

 mounds heretofore described as being composed of " alternate layers of 

 sand and shell" (see Smithsonian Keport for 1879, pp. 296 and 405), and 

 will remove the greatest difficulty in the way of our admitting them to 



