166 YACHTING CW THE ST. JOHXS. 



mucli crushed and broken, but cemented quite firmly ; 

 other strata are without shells of this form, being com 

 posed of conical, convolute shells of about one inch on 

 each angular side ; but these differ again in some the 

 shells are fresh, but little broken, and not firmly 

 cemented ; in others crushed in line fragments, and 

 strongly united with the lime made by their partial 

 decomposition. All these varieties may be seen over 

 lying one another in a vertical height of four or five feet, 

 and the different bands of color form lines that are visi 

 ble as far as the face of the formation is exposed. 



Upon these shell lands there are found numerous 

 conical mounds, regular in form, rising from ten to 

 thirty feet, evidently of human origin, supposed to have 

 been, like the pyramids of Egypt, burial places for the 

 distinguished dead of some race that has left no other 

 record. The arrow-heads, axes, and other works of rude 

 art, found in these mounds, are those of the Stone 

 Age, which on this continent is extended to the present 

 time among some remote Indian tribes ; but some of 

 these implements are found imbedded in a conglomerate 

 so firm and stone-like that they convey to the mind of 

 the ethnologist an impression of as remote antiquity as 

 surrounds the bone caves and gravel deposits of France. 



A great deal of learning has been exhausted upon 

 these remains ; but full examination has not yet been 

 made, and many links in the chain of unwritten history 

 may be supplied when a full comparison of these 

 mounds, and the works they contain, is made with tlio 

 corresponding discoveries of the Old World. 



As the more minute peculiarities of our pro-historic 

 ancestors are learned, there is no safe limit to assume of 

 the unravellings of the maze that surrounds the deeply 



