278 November 1748. 



marfhes are vifibly decreafed, and many of them 

 dried up. 



MAONS KEEN, a Swede, above feventy years 

 old, aflerted, that, on digging a well, he had 

 feen, at the depth of forty feet, a great piece of 

 chefnut wood, together with roots and ftalks of 

 reed, and a clayey earth like that which com- 

 monly covers the fhores of falt-water bays and 

 coves. This clay had a fimilar fmell and a feline 

 tafte. Mams Keen, and feveral other people, in- 

 ferred from hence, that the whole country, 

 where Raccoon and Penn's neck are fituated, was 

 anciently quite overflowed by the fea. They 

 likewife knew, that, at a great depth in the 

 ground, fuch a trowel, as the Indians make ufe 

 of, had been found. 



SVEN LOCK, and William Cobb> both above 

 fifty years of age, agreed, that in many places 

 hereabouts, where wells had been dug, they 

 had feen a great quantity of reed, moftly rotten, 

 at the depth of twenty or thirty feet and up- 

 wards. 



As Cobb made a well for himfelf, the work- 

 men, after digging twenty feet deep, came upon 

 fo thick a branch, that they could not get for- 

 wards, till it was cut in two places ; the wood 

 was ftill very hard. It is very common to find, 

 near the furface of the earth, quantities of all 

 forts of leaves not quite putrified. On making 

 a dyke fome years ago, along the river on which 

 the church at Raccoon ftands j and for that pur- 

 pofe cutting through a bank, it was found quite 

 fall of oyfter {hells, though this place is above a 

 hundred and twenty Englijh miles from the 



neareft 



