\ 2 Timehri. 



great distance from the sea, or from streams leading to the sea. Finally, 

 the shells are mainly Neritas (periwinkles) oysters, Strombus (eonchs) and 

 a few other bivalves and univalves, all of which are species inhabiting 

 rocky or sandy shores and never found on the muddy coasts and in the 

 brackish estuaries of British Guiana at the present time. It may be 

 argued that the Indians brought these edible molluscs in canoes 

 from Trinidad or the northern islands, but this is a theory 

 far-fetched and untenable. In the first place the shells would 

 have spoiled and become inedible long before they reached Guiana's 

 shores ; in the second place the Indians would never load down their boats 

 with useless shells containing a very small amount of edible flesh and 

 finally we are confronted with the fact that many of the largest deposits 

 are many miles from any watercourse and are buried in the heart of the 

 dense forest. 



The stupendous number of sea-shells which form these mounds is 

 almost incredible and proves that either a very large population once 

 inhabited these island hills or else that large villages remained undis- 

 turbed for a vast number of years. On Barambina Hill, for example, the 

 deposit of shells (mainly small Neritas) covers an area of over 150ft. x 

 300 ft. and with an average depth of five feet or something over 8,333 

 cubic yards. Tests proved that the shells weighed an average of 70 lbs. 

 to the cubic foot and that each pound contained about 300 shells. Hence, 

 in this one mound there must be fully five billion shells weighing 

 approximately 8,000 tons. 



And this is only one of scores of such mounds, for I have traced the 

 accumulations on hills for over 70 miles from the present sea coast. At 

 first one can scarcely believe that these shells have remained here for 

 centuries, for many are almost as bright and fresh as when first gathered, 

 but at a short distance beneath the surface they become semi-fossilized 

 and cemented together by carbonate of lime into a hard, stony mass. This 

 fact rather points to the assumption that the mounds were accumulated 

 slowly and through many years rather than being the result of a large 

 population remaining in one spot for a comparatively short period. 



The identity of the race which made these mounds is a mystery for, 

 as I shall point out in the following paragraphs, they certainly antedated 

 the kitchen-middens of the coastal districts and were not of Carib origin 

 as the latter are supposed to be. A great deal of time would be required 

 to investigate all the known deposits and mounds in the district and no 

 doubt there are many still unknown and hidden in the dense forestB and 

 swamps ; but there is no reason to think that they differ materially from 

 those visited, although much additional information and valuable material 

 might be obtained by a systematic and scientific study of the relics. It 

 is to be regretted that the Colonial Government haB never taken sufficient 

 interest in its Aboriginal inhabitants to carry out an exhaustive investi- 

 gation of both the prehistoric and living Indians. 



