412 ON SOME ANCIENT MOUNDS OF THE BAY OF QUINTE. 
one a cut was made thirty-three feet long, two feet wide, and three 
feet deep, to the original surface of the ground ; after removing a few 
inches of mould, a heap of broken gneissoid rock was displayed, con- 
forming to the shape of the outside of the work. The bits of rock 
composing the work were of various sizes and forms, and would weigh 
from one to twenty pounds each, but immediately under the basin, 
and forming the bottom of it, the bits of rock were much smaller 
than those constituting the general pile. All the pieces presented 
angular fractures, but no marks of tools were discovered upon them. 
Many of the bits of rock were in a disintegrated state, so much so as 
to crumble into coarse sand before the pick. This circumstance may 
perhaps be attributable to the employment of fire as an agency in 
_ preparing the stones for the builders, from the boulders of the adjacent 
plain. No other traces of fire were observed. In a cross section, at 
right angles to the former, and again passing through the centre of 
the basin, several small pieces of bone and birch bark were turned up ; 
they were found a few inches from the surface, between the soil and 
the bed of stone. No other remains were discovered. It may be here 
remarked, that the presence of a few bones near the surface of a 
mound, is no indication of the purpose for which the work was origin- 
ally built, for it is well ascertained that many of the mounds of the 
Western States, constructed evidently for different objects than those 
of sepulture, have been used by modern Indians for that purpose.* 
The other mounds examined agreed in all particulars of construc- 
tion with that above described, excepting in one pair where it was 
evident from what remained that the inside margin of the basin of 
each mound had been surrounded with flat stones placed vertically 
and touching at their edges, as if designed to prevent the earth falling 
inte the hollow. Similar stones, perhaps used for the same purpose, 
wer. observed lying near most of the other mounds in this vicinity. 
The marginal stones have been displaced, it would appear, by the so- 
called ‘‘money-diggers,” a class of superstitious begs everywhere 
found, the traces of whose Vandalism are not wanting upon most of 
the antiquities of this continent ; and the absence of all remains in 
the works examined, can best be attributed to their operations. In 
several instances the builders have been forced, from the nature of the 
* It is only a few years since, that two French Canadians, found drowned, were taken by 
the people of the vicinity, and buried upon one of the best preserved mounds upon Mas- 
sassaga Point, 
