A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 463 
We also found gunflints and flint cores from which they had been 
made, silver and brass military buttons, broken clay pipes, ete. All 
these, however, probably belonged to the period of the war of 1812. 
Charles Island, or “Goat Island,” a little farther south, is rather 
smaller and still more barren, as it is covered in some places with 
drifting sand. It also has the ruins of a small fort on its highest 
point. This stone redoubt was built by Governor Moore about 1614, 
and mounted only two guns. (Fig. 22.) 
Figure 22.—Charles Island and Ruins of Charles Fort, built about 1614. 
Norwood, the engineer, stated in 1663 that this fort was even 
then “fallen into decay.” In digging into a bed of loose sand, 
undermined by the sea, on the north side of this island, we found an 
abundance of large fossil snail shells, of a species not now living on 
these smaller islands, and nearby, two skeletons of soldiers, associated 
with military brass buttons, made in Dublin, and stamped with three 
mounted cannon, in a row, indicating an artilleryman. 
The most interesting finds on Castle Island were the broken 
pearly shells of the West Indian Whelk (Zivona pied), which had, 
apparently, been used as food. This mollusk, which is eaten in the 
West Indies and called the “ whelk,” has been so long extinct in the 
Bermudas that nothing is now known of its former presence in the 
living state. Its large, thick, mottled, and partly pearly shell is 
