A PRIMITIVE URN BURIAL. 613 



Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina." And 

 he relates, on pages 455, 450 of his valuable work, a very interesting 

 account of the recovery from a small shell mound on Colonel's Island, 

 in Liberty County, Georgia, of a burial urn, inclosed in two others, con- 

 taining the bones of a young child. 



The urn-burial from the Altamaha mound — the subject of this paper — 

 is original in design and remarkable for its ingenious simplicity. The 

 pottery-ware is practically imperishable; and sealed almost hermetically, 

 as were the ashes of the dead they contained, in that region where frost 

 is scarcely known, they must have endured forever but for some con- 

 vulsion of nature — or the implements of civilization. The presence, in 

 the funeral vase, of small pearls with the wamjuim beads, and the 

 chalk-like condition of both, attest the antiquity of this singular sepul- 

 chral deposit. Pearls were worn as personal ornaments in great pro- 

 fusion by the Indians of eastern Georgia when De Soto came among 

 them, in 1540. The Gentleman of Elvas says that 14 bushels of them 

 were found by the Spaniards in one charnel-house at Cofachiqui. 

 Pickett remarks, in his History of Alabama, '' There can be no doubt 

 about the quantity of pearls found in this State of Georgia, in 1540, but 

 they were of a coarser and less valuable kind than the Spaniards 

 supposed. The Indians used to perforate them with a heated copper 

 spindle, and string them round their necks and arms like beads." 



Centuries have passi d, with their ceaseless changes, since the hands 

 of affection placed those venerated ashesof the dead and bead ornaments 

 in that mound-covered crypt of clay pottery; and they who mourned 

 on that occasion have, ages ago, been resolved into dust; but in these 

 simple relics, they left — as legible as though graven in letters on polished 

 marble — a record of their crude religious feelings, of their child like 

 faith and reverence, and of their very human yearnings for life ever- 

 lasting. 



;Note. — Since this paper was written the mound in which the pottery 

 vessels and incinerated human remains were found has been thoroughly 

 explored; and nothing further was discovered but a bed of ashes and 

 charcoal on the ground surface in the center of the tumulus. 



