MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 583 



ance archaeologically. This pile of stone is about 280 feet long, and on 

 an average 2 rods wide, and in the middle is about 30 inches high. 

 The distance from the front face of the bluff to the middle of the stone 

 wall is about 300 feet. The lengths were obtained by pacing, and the 

 width and depth by tape-lmo. The middle of this inclosed space is from 

 15 to 20 feet higher than the edges, the slope being gradual. The whole 

 space is covered with trees similar in size and appearance to those 

 on the tops of the other bluffs. All around the bluff, from the front or 

 south face to the east and west, the rocks are either peri^endicular or 

 overhanging; but on both sides back of the line of piled stone the top 

 may easily be reached, as the distance from the summit of the bluff 

 on its southern face to the more nearly level ground below decreases 

 toward the north, being perhaps 50 feet at the eastern and 25 feet at the 

 western end of the stone wall. This pile of stone across the neck of the 

 bluff shows evidence of having been a wall. To see if there were any 

 signs of regularity in its structure, and upon what base it had been 

 constructed, we took out a cross-section of the stone in one place where 

 they seemed to have been thrown down, and partial sections in several 

 other places. First, the materials are sandstone, the same as that of 

 the bluffs. Many of them are flat, all irregular, just as would occur in 

 breaking up that kind of stone. In size they vary from some smaller 

 than a man's head to those as large as one man can lift. They are built 

 upon the ground and not upon the ledge of rocks, as the earth beneath 

 the pile is the same as that constituting the top of the bluff, save that 

 here there is no vegetable mold. Most of the larger stones are placed 

 where was the base of the wall, seemingly with but little regularity. 

 At the ends, where the hill is a little steep, the flat stones at the bottom 

 are set on edge, and the next course so laid that its top surface would 

 be nearly level, or sloping a little up the hill. This, of course, would 

 make it easier to lay the succeeding stones. Where these stones came 

 from is hard to tell. If there were only a few of them one might conclude 

 that they were picked up from the surface of the inclosed ai ea south of 

 the wall and on the open space north of it. But there are not stone 

 enough on the same area of the tops of the other bluffs to make such a 

 pile. Part of them may have been obtained in that way and the rest 

 brought there from abovc», where this bluff is not very high. 



The question "why they were placed there?" seems to admit of but 

 one answer — they were a means of defense. The fact that it has been 

 known as Stone Fort ever since the country was settled imi)lies that 

 such has been the general opinion of the people acquainted with the 

 place. It has been assumed, however, that it was the work of hunt- 

 ers for the purpose of a protection to their camp. I can hardly con- 

 ceive that a party of hunters, for a temporary camp, would go to the 

 trouble of gathering such a mass of stone as is represented in 280 feet 

 long, 33 feet wide, and, on an average, li feet high. It may have been 

 the location of an Indian encampment in some former years, and built 



