382 ETIIXOLOGY. 



to have been dug through the loose shale rock. I ran a pole down iuto the 

 water and mnd from twelve to fifteen feet, and it did not tbeu touch 

 hard bottom. A quantity of logs and sticks had lately been taken from 

 the well ; they were much decayed. On the opposite side of the branch, 

 and a little down it, say about sixty to seventy-five feet from the well, 

 were Indian remains. They covered a space of about thirty by fifty 

 feet, and about three to four feet above the water in the branch. The 

 soil is a vegetable mold from six to eighteen inches deep, through which 

 are found fragments of earthen-ware, ashes, and burned stones. I dug a 

 treuch, twenty feet long and as deep as any remains were to be found, 

 along the center from one side of this place. The bottom of the branch 

 is the shale in i)lace, and there is no deep soil, that about the well being 

 about a foot deep, made up of loose stone. This place was pointed out 

 to me by Mr. Staples as being the one spoken of in the paper, and 

 where he had found fragments of earthen kettles of a diameter, as indi- 

 cated by their curvature, of over three feet. Half a mile east of the 

 dwelliug of Mr. Staples, on a low ridge, and about the same distance 

 west of Poplar Creek, are three mounds. They are on nearly a straight 

 line north and south, and one hundred and fift^' feet apart. The south one 

 is fifty feet in diameter and six and a half feet high, round and oval on 

 top. They have all been plowed over for several years ; very small frag- 

 ments of bones are found about them now, and I was told that human 

 remaius were plowed up on all of them. I dug a trench across the center 

 of the south one, nine feet long, seven and a half deep, and two wide ; I 

 went below the streak of black soil the mound vras built ou. The earth 

 of the mounds is of the same color as that in the fields on all sides, 

 only it was streaked a little with darker colored earth. The middle one 

 of the mounds was only about four feet high ; I did not dig into it. 

 The nortli one was about sixty feet long from the southeast to the 

 northwest, of an oval shape, and about forty feet wide. I dug down 

 iuto this one about three and a half feet, and found nothing. In the 

 fields I found a quantity of arrow-heads, but not a particle of pottery. 

 A third of a mile to the southeast, on lower ground, is another mound 

 a little larger than the first one described. I did not dig into it. 



I left Mr. Staples on Tuesday morning, and traveled via the old salt- 

 works, three miles up the creek from his house. Salt was made here 

 years ago, before the completion of the railroads ; and Staples made some 

 there during the war, using the coal obtained from the hills only one- 

 half to three-fourths of a mile from the well ; but as the brine is weak it 

 does not pay now to work the well. I reached the house of Alfred 

 Cross, on the west side of Clinch Iliver, and five miles down it from 

 Clinton, about noon. I had heard of the finding of many Indian relics 

 on the opposite side of the river, on the lands of George and John John- 

 son, they having been washed out of the soil on the river-bottom by 

 the flood of last year. I crossed the river and went to the house of C. E. 

 Robins. A negro man in his employ had found and gave me the shal- 



