MISCELLANEOUS INVESTIGATION IN FLORIDA. 309 
present conditions existed when the mound was built, the sand used in its making 
must have been carried some distance, perhaps from the creek, as the black muck 
of the swamp surrounds the mound on every side. 
The basal diameter of the mound is hard to determine. Either much sand has 
washed from the mound, forming a deposit at its base, or a sort of platform was 
built to serve as a base. The diameter, excluding this deposit or platform, is about 
90 feet. 
A great hole had been dug into the center previous to our visit. 
Throughout the surrounding swamp are shell fields and numerous causeways 
of shell, extending in all directions. A narrow causeway, with steep sides, about 
90 yards long, leaving the northwestern part of the mound, connects it with a large 
shell field. Another causeway extends from the same part of the mound at а 
different angle toward the same shell deposit, which, however, it fails to join. А 
third causeway leads from the mound toward Shell creek, but does not meet it. 
A considerable amount of digging by us yielded 7 flexed burials, from 1 foot 
to 5 feet in depth. Хо artifacts lay with 
them, though previous diggers report the 
finding of many glass beads, and one such 
bead was met with by us in sand previ- 
ously thrown out. 
A small number of sherds were found, 
two or three of which are of excellent ware. 
Several are decorated with the small 
check-stamp, and others have incised and 
punetate decoration of inferior execution 
(Figs. 1, 12, 13, 14). Fic. 14.—Sherd, Mound near Punta Rassa. (Half size.) 
Mounp ISLAND, Estero Bay, LEE COUNTY. 
This interesting key known as Mound Island, described in a former report,’ 
was again visited by us. We learned from Mrs. F. M. Johnson that nothing of 
importance had been recovered since our previous visit, either from the shell 
deposits or from the famous sand mound which has yielded so many objects of 
European manufacture. Mrs. Johnson kindly had saved for us two bird-head deco- 
rations which had belonged to earthenware vessels, somewhat similar, though 
inferior, to those described in our former report as coming from Goodland Point, 
Key Marco, which also are referred to by Professor Holmes. 
Marco, Key Marco, Lee County. 
The Island of Marco (see outline map), otherwise known as Key Marco, is, 
as we have said, next to the northernmost key of the Ten Thousand islands, a 
group of keys bordering the southwestern Florida coast for a distance of about 
70 miles in a straight line. 
1 ** Certain Antiquities of the Florida West-Coast.” 
? « Aboriginal Pottery of Eastern United States,” W. H. Holmes, 20th Annual Report of the 
Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 128. 
