596 CERTAIN MOUNDS ОЕ ARKANSAS AND OF MISSISSIPPI. 
Sciences are tendered for full and cordial permission to investigate, consists of a 
great central mound, 55 feet high, surrounded by fourteen other mounds forming 
an irregular ellipse. One of these mounds is so nearly obliterated, however, that 
it might well be passed over in an enumeration. 
The diameters of this ellipse are about 1600 feet NE. and SW., and 1000 feet 
NW. and SE. 
The central mound, marked A, and the other mounds marked B to O, inclu- 
sive, are shown in the accompanying plat of a survey! made by Dr. M. G. Miller, 
at the time of our visit. 
Certain small elevations outside and inside the ellipse, probably dwelling-sites, 
have been disregarded in the plan. 
The Blum mounds, uninvestigated previous to our visit, though a few holes 
had been dug into them (by treasure-seekers, it is said), are not mentioned in the 
* Mound Reports" of the ** Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology." 
They are not the “ Avondale Mounds” referred to in the “Twelfth Annual 
Report" and in Thomas' * Catalogue of Prehistorie Works," but are unquestionably 
the group described in the latter work as being “nearly opposite Point Chicot," 
which group is more fully described in the Smithsonian Report for 1879, page 383 
et seg., though the plan accompanying the description gives but little idea of the 
mounds as they appear at present. 
These mounds on the river plain and, consequently, on land subject to over- 
flow, are not, however, exposed to wash of water in time of flood, it is said, the 
distance from the river being such that the current has no influence, and the water 
consequently is still. 
The summits of the more important mounds of the group, so far as known, 
have never been submerged, the usual rise of water about the mounds when there 
is a flood being, we are told, from 3 to 5 feet. 
Nevertheless, a number of the mounds (E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O) have 
no regularity of outline, a fact due, we believe, to long-continued cultivation, though 
some of the mounds enumerated have not been plowed over in comparatively recent 
times. 
Even the regularity of most of the larger mounds, the sides of which are too 
steep for cultivation, is considerably impaired, owing, probably, to wash of rain; to 
the constant tread of mules, sheep, goats, and hogs, which frequent the mounds in 
numbers; to the deep and extensive rooting of hogs; and to the general wear and 
tear of time, which is ever more destructive in the case of mounds like the Blum 
mounds which are but little protected by the roots of trees and shrubbery. 
It might be suggested that in earlier times, before the erection of the levee, 
different conditions tending to make stronger the erosive force of the water, may 
' Though the expedition was amply provided with photographic apparatus, no photographs of the 
mounds were made. Experience has shown that the work of the camera in connection with mounds is 
misleading, undue prominence to the foreground being given and inadequate portrayal of the heights. 
