MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 585 



pottery made of red day, and fine gravel. The pieces Avere half an inch 

 thick, or nearly so, and, judging lloni the curve, they may have been of 

 considerable size. 



One morning in March, 1880, a party of us went to the bluffs known 

 locally as Buffalo Gap, a deep triangular hollow, inclosed on two sides 

 by immense ledges of stone, towering high above the tree-tops, and pro- 

 jecting far over the base, and forming sheltered nooks which bid defl- 

 auce to the storms of winter and the heat of summer. 



All along the base of these rocks the ground is strewn with flint 

 chippings, bones, bits of pottery, arrow-heads, rocks, and rubbish. We 

 made excavations in several places, and to various depths, varying from 

 1 to 3 feet. 



The earth is dry and loose, and composed of considerable vegetable 

 matter, and has the appearance of having been forming slowly for ages. 

 All through this dust we found bits of pottery, arrow-heads, charred 

 bones, charcoal, bones split lengthwise to extract the marrow, mussel- 

 shells, turtle-shells, deers' horns, bones and jaws of various kinds of 

 mammals, a bunch of charred hay, a large limestone mortar, having a 

 bowl nicely cut in the center, which was circular in form and 1 foot in 

 diameter, and deep enough to hold abo«t a gallon. On a fire-bed 2 feet 

 from the surface were the fragments of an earthen pot, probably a cook- 

 ing vessel, as it contained bones and a fragment of a deer's upper jaw; 

 also other material, which we were unable to determine. Near this pot 

 were numerous spherical bodies, resembling spice in form, white, hollow, 

 and too fragile to be preserved. 



The pottery has markings on the surface like the impression of grass, 

 twine, and sometimes small sticks, showing that the vessels were 

 molded in some kind of woven sack or basket made of willows and 

 twisted grass. Some of the fragments were smooth and thin, the coarser 

 ones one-half inch thick, and made of pounded mussel-shells, small 

 gravel, and red clay. The shells which were found were i)robably 

 brought up for that purpose, the animal having been used for food. The 

 arrow-heads are rude and very jioor compared with the field specimens 

 of which I will speak later. 



An old fort is near b^', on top of a cliff, and cut off from the main land 

 bj' a wall of stone, which is now nearly fiat, covering a base 20 feet wide 

 and about 150 feet long. The fort is triangular, the wall making one 

 side and the x>erpendicular rocks below forming the other two sides. 

 It had but one point of access from below, which is a path up a crevice 

 in the rock, and could have been easily defended from above. This has 

 the appearance of being very ancient. 



Near the Illinois Central Eailroad track, 5 miles north of Cobden, are 

 other large bluffs, and underneath are numerous beds, which have afforded 

 a great many relics. Several human skeletons have been unearthed, 

 more or less preserved, though usuallj' badly decayed, but one skull 



