424 ETHNOLOGY. 



tliicket. These cemetery-mounds are very ancient. Sapelo Island is 

 famous for its wonderful moss-hung live oaks : but the largest bodied 

 tree on the island, one over 4 feet in diameter at the stump, and 7 feet 

 in height, to just below the first fork, grows on top of the biggest 

 burial-mound at the i^lace marked "Kenan.-'' Considering the great 

 compactness of live-oak, this tree is probably six hundred years or more 

 old. How old, then, is the mound? It is yet about 8 feet high, on a 

 base of 50 feet diameter, a little elliptical, situated in an open field, and 

 covered with live oak and cedar. 



The big mound on the east side, at Bobone field, (negro corruption of 

 Bourbon, as the old French colonists called it,) is yet 9 leet high, or 

 more, 70 feet in diameter, and is circular in form. The negroes report it 

 full of pottery and men's bones. I hope soon to send you specimens of its 

 pottery and implements. It stands on the inland tide-marsh side, near 

 the south end of a field of seventy-five acres, the entire surface of which 

 field is dotted and white with hundreds of shell-mounds, from 2 to 4 feet 

 high, and from 15 to 50 feet base. Broken j)ottery and broken stone imple- 

 ments from the far-off mountain quarries are found here, as at the circle- 

 mounds on the west shore; but, so far, not a weapon of fight, or of the 

 hunter, of any sort, large or small, has been found on Sapelo. I find the 

 tanner's tool, but no weai)on of death. This fact is very remarkable. 

 On the main-land, in the hill region of Middle and Upper Georgia, almost 

 every acre has its ancient stone weapons, its arrow-heads, javelins, dirks, 

 slung-shot, or battle-axes 5 but the ancient fishermen of Sapelo — its for- 

 gotten mound-builders — either had no weapons of war, or they were not 

 of stone, and have perished. At least none are found or heard of now. 

 If any ever existed there, they must be buried in the mounds. How- 

 ever, I will soon know, as my young friends on the island, and Mrs. 

 Spalding, all of whom enter ardently into my explorations, will, in the 

 course of this year, get the negroes to open the mounds, and will send 

 me the relics for the Georgia department in the museum of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. 



In the meanv.bile I will procure a survey of the mound-fields of South- 

 western Georgia, as you request ; and perhaps, too, of the chain of 



Ockmulgee mounds, which are very large cones. 



******* 



The two groups of mounds which I have had surveyed by James K. 

 Evans, at the expense of the Institution, are in Early County, Ga. 

 One grouji is near Kolee Mokee Creek, and the other at Dry Creek. 



The following is a representation from actual survey of the position 

 and form of the mounds and earth walls on Kolee Mokee Creek, in Early 

 County, Georgia. They are principally on a plantation now occupied by 

 Mr. A. J. Mercier. I say principally, because the eastern portion of the 

 walls extends over on to the plantation of Judge Joshua Harris. 



In the investigation of these ancient remains we began by measuring 

 the large pyramidal mound, which we found of the following dimen- 

 sion : Circumference, 1,128 feet ; length of base, 350 feet ; width of base, 



