66 IN LOWER FLORIDA WILDS 



"White Water Bay." The entrance into this bay 

 is in reality a narrow, brackish stream, or rather 

 the two delta mouths, of Jos River and Big Sable 

 Creek which open to the Gulf of Mexico through 

 the great wall of mangrove forest. There is also 

 a water connection to the north with the Shark 

 River Archipelago. Chokoloskee Bay is some- 

 times represented as a large triangular sound and 

 again as a mere constricted channel. On some 

 maps it is not indicated at all. 



The village of Chokoloskee is built on a great 

 island shell mound in one place thirty-five feet 

 high. At another spot on the top of a mound a 

 space forty feet square is leveled off as if intended 

 for a lookout or possibly for the site of a building. 

 In places the shells are disposed in long parallel 

 ricks, as though the Indians who placed them had 

 begun the process at the shore and gradually 



I moved inland. The shells forming these mounds 

 are all of species now living in the Gulf of Mexico 

 near by and are mostly the common oyster (Ostrea 

 virginica) ; Fulgur perversus, a large, reversed shell ; 

 F. pyrum, Fasciolaria gigantea, the largest gastro- 

 pod mollusk of the new world, F. tulipa, F. distans, 

 Melongena corona, and Murex pomum. There are 



