230 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



the not unfrequent occurrence of unfinished arrow-heads, which had been thrown 

 aside as useless, on account of a wrong crack or some other defect in the stone. 

 There can be no doubt that the material was here furnished, to a great extent at 

 least, in the shape of uncountable pebbles of silicious character ; for nearly all 

 the unfinished arrow-heads picked up by me still exhibit portions of the smooth, 

 water- worn surface of the pebbles from which they were made. Among the 

 collected objects I specially mention two scrapers of brown jasper, worked into 

 a spoon-like form, which lay on the shell-covered ground, a short distance from 

 each other, and were perhaps made by the same hand* 



At the time of my sojourn at Keyport old people still remembered that 

 Indians annually visited the neighborhood for catching shell-fish, which they 

 dried for consumption during winter. These Indians are said to have belonged 

 to the Narragansett tribe, which may be true, but seems somewhat improbable, 

 as they might have been able to obtain their supplies of mollusks in the more 

 northern, sea-bordered district inhabited by them. 



Some interesting data concerning shell-heaps in New Jersey have been 

 furnished by Dr. Cook. "There are," he says, "immense deposits of shells 

 found at different places along the sea-shore. They are the marks of the abor- 

 igines who came down here to gather their supplies of clams and oysters, and 

 left the shells in piles as we now see them. Some of them are the remains of 

 shells which have been broken up to make wampum. Large piles of these 

 broken shells have been met with at Manahawkin, at Tuckerton, at Leed's Point, 

 at Beesley's Point, and they have been heard of at several other places. 



" They are applied directly on the soil, and soon begin to show their good 

 effects. They may be used with safety in almost any quantity, and will be found 

 a lasting fertilizer. "f 



Dr. Cook noticed that in several places of the New Jersey coast the salt- 

 marsh had encroached upon the shell-heaps and gx-own several feet around them. 

 According to his opinion, the Atlantic coast of North America has been for 

 several hundred years past, and still is, in a state of slow subsidence.^ The 

 origin of these shell-heaps evidently dates back to a time when their sites lay 

 higher, and were free from salt-meadow. 



Delaware. — Mr. Francis Jordan, Jr., of Philadelphia, has published through 

 the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia an account of an abor- 

 iginal encampment at Rehoboth, a watering-place on the coast of Delaware, five 

 miles south of the town of Lewes, and nineteen miles from Cape May, which 



* One of them is figured on p. 406 of the Smithsonian Report for 1872. 

 t Cook: Geology of New Jersey; Newarli, New Jersey, 18G8; p. 501. 

 t Ibid.; p. 362. 



