614 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



than the rest, was of medium size and remarkably round. The others 

 seeuied of similar size and type. The teeth of all were well preseived, 

 and did not exhibit any appearance of having been faulty during the 

 lifetime of their owners. IS^one of the bones seemed to have belonged 

 to persons above the average size, with the exception of one femur. 

 Neither the vertebral nor pelvic bones, the ribs, the omoplates, nor the 

 bones of the hands and feet were preserved. These human remains 

 were from 5 to 7i feet beneath the surface of the ground, and 10 or 12 

 feet above the level of the bay. 



After an interval of about six weeks, 1 again visited the spot. About 

 2 feet of the hill had caved away since my first visit; but the bone de.- 

 posit was still unexhausted, for I found three more skulls and several 

 limb bones, all of which broke into fragments in extracting them from 

 the compact sand. 



I was disappointed in not finding stone arrow-heads in the caved 

 sand. But my search for them was not thorough. There is no reason, 

 however, to doubt that these are aboriginal remains. Their imperfect 

 state of preservation in any kind of earth, very conservative of organic 

 substances, alone warrants the conclusion that they are ancient, which 

 is reinforced by an argument which I will here state. These remains 

 are found at the southern extremity of a sand ridge about 2 miles long 

 from north to south, and varying in height from 20 to 40 or 50 feet, and 

 which was evidently formed while the gulf beat directly upon the shore 

 of the mainland. But ever since the long, sandy islands extending i)ar- 

 allel with our coast were heaped up by the action of the waves and cur- 

 rents of the sea, the only communication between the gulf and the in- 

 terior bays, or lagoons, has been through a few narrow channels called 

 "bayous." The consequence is, that the sandy materials of which the 

 "dunes" are formed, instead of reaching the shore of the mainland as 

 in former ages, are now deposited on the gulf side of the islands and 

 blown up by the east and southeast winds into hillocks similar to, but 

 generally less elevated than, those which were formerly heaped by the 

 same agency upon the mainland. 



Now, on the assumption that these human remains, in accordance 

 with the universal custom of ISTorth American savages, were only in- 

 ferred to the depth of 2 feet at most, several feet of sand must subse- 

 quently have been blown over them to account for the depth at which 

 they were found, and the sand for this purpose must have been trans- 

 ported to the adjacent beach by the currents of the gulf. Hence, I 

 conclude that the remains were deposited in the "dune" before the gulf 

 was cut off from the mainland by the formation of the chain of island 

 barriers above mentioned. The sand ridge containing the osseous relics 

 has been preserved from the wasting effects of the winds by the thickets 

 of dwarf oak and sweet bay with which it is overgrown. Some of the 

 live oaks at its eastern base are of sufficient girth to indicate an age of 

 two centuries. Other oaks of the same species a short distance south 



