ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 231 



lies diagonally opposite. The camping-ground is situated directly in the rear of 

 what is now called Rehoboth Beach, and not more than five hundred feet distant 

 fi'om the sea. 



" The present dimensions of the encampment," says Mr. Jordan, " are, in 

 length, three-quarters of a mile, running in a direct line north and south, parallel 

 with and, as I have said, distant from the ocean some four or five hundred feet, 

 and protected from it by a sand-blufF rising six or eight feet above high-water 

 mark, and extending from Rehoboth Beach to Cape Henlopen. The width of 

 the encampment varies from one hundred to five hundred feet. A ridge of sand- 

 hills intersects its length, dividing it into nearly equal parts, and as the southern 

 section is on a higher plane, the two form what might be called an upper and a 

 lower encam^^ment. 



" Lying a quarter of a mile south, stretches out the famous Rehoboth Bay, 

 once the habitation of clams and oysters, and whose shallow waters still teem 

 with a great variety of fish and myriads of hard and shedder crabs. Skirting a 

 portion of the western boundary, we behold one of those phenomenal freaks of 

 nature rarely met with on our coast, namely, three lakes whose waters are per- 

 fectly fresh and clear as any in our northern latitudes, although within a few 

 hundred feet of the salt sea. The largest covers some fifty acres of land and has 

 a mean depth of five feet. The quantity of water in each remains nearly the 

 same in all seasons, the constant exhaustion from evajDoration being supplied 

 by hidden springs. 



" In selecting this spot as the site for an encampment, the Indians displayed 

 a keen appreciation of its unsurpassed natural advantages. Here they had 

 every comfort their savage natures could wish for. Game, fish, and oysters in 

 abundance and easily obtained : an inexhaustible supply of fresh water at their 

 very threshold ; and the adjacent forest of white oak harbored the deer and bear, 

 and furnished them with fuel, and lumber to construct their sea-canoe. 



" Hitherto for many centuries they annually came to escape the enervating 

 heat of the inland villages, and probably remained far into the autumn, or until 

 the geese and ducks, with which the bay and lakes are stocked at this period, 

 deserted those placid waters for a warmer climate. Hence it is that I call this 

 an encampment, in contradistinction to their permanent abiding-places. The 

 evidences of their sojourn — their domestic habits — are many, and even to the 

 unscientific observer are unmistakable in the conclusions they point to. The 

 character of the ground is in itself a revelation, and contributes to the belief 

 that its level and compact surface — almost as solid as a macadamized road, 

 whereon no vegetable growth is visible — is not entirely the result of nature's 

 handiwork, but that the foot of man assisted in producing it. It seems to have 

 been so pounded down by the tread of the successive generations of its periodical 



