fowke] ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 167 



Mountain Railway. Fully 100 were observed within a distance of 

 a mile; and they are said to continue both up and down the river. 

 They are all above flood stage, except in time of extreme high water. 

 They range from a foot to 3 feet high, and from 20 to 40 feet across ; 

 but some of them have been lowered and broadened by cultivation. 

 They are of the same earth as the ground around them. Mr. Hop- 

 kins says crops are much better on the mounds than on the area 

 between them. This is no doubt due to the greater amount of pro- 

 ductive soil in the one case, and to the excess of moisture in the other ; 

 the railway embankment impeding drainage in the lower part. Oak 

 trees 4 feet in diameter grew on the mounds before they were 

 cleared off. 



Two of these mounds were completely removed, down into the 

 subsoil. The first was 18 inches high and 35 by 40 feet across; the 

 variation in breadth resulting from continual cultivation in one 

 direction. It contained nothing whatever of artificial character, 

 not even a scrap of pottery. There were no post holes, no indi- 

 cations of a fire bed, no trace of a distinction between the mound 

 and the soil below it. In fact, except for the greater thickness of 

 the superficial dark earth there was no difference between the appear- 

 ance of the face of the excavation and that of a hole dug at random 

 in the field. 



The second mound was somewhat larger than the first, being 2 

 feet higli and 40 feet across, and at a little higher level toward the 

 edge of the field. It was the largest which could be excavated of 

 this group. As in the first mound opened, there was no worked 

 object, if a small flint flake be excepted; no ashes; no fire bed; no 

 trace of demarcation between the mound and the original surface 

 of the ground, though in each mound the excavation over the entire 

 area was carried down into the gravelly, hard-packed subsoil. Its 

 artificial origin is clearly proven, however, by four holes dug into 

 the earth beneath it before its construction. Nine feet a little north of 

 the center, which was assumed to be the highest point of the mound, 

 was a hole (A) 12 by 14 inches and 14 inches deep, with a flat bottom, 

 the sides as regular as could be expected in hard soil dug out in primi- 

 tive manner. Nine feet west of the center was a hole (B) a foot 

 actoss, 10 inches deep, with a solid though somewhat irregular bot- 

 tom. Near the center was a conical hole (C) a foot deep and the 

 same across the top. Four feet from it, west of north, was another 

 (D) of about the same size and shape. The measures given are of 

 course only approximate, as the sides of all the holes were somewhat 

 uneven, but they are practically correct. The depth was measured 

 from the top of the gravelly subsoil. Fourteen feet east of soutli 

 from the center was an irregular hole (E) about 2 feet deep to the 

 bottom of the loose dirt in it. This had not been dug, but was 



