INDIAN SHELL MOUND. [CHAP. XVIII 



like young puppies. They ate voraciously, yet their growth was 

 so slow, as to confirm him in the common opinion, that individ 

 uals which have attained the largest size are of very great age ; 

 though whether they live for three centuries, as some pretend, 

 must be decided by future observations. 



Mr. Couper told me that, in the summer of 1845, he saw a 

 shoal of porpoises coming up to that part of the Altamaha where 

 the fresh and salt water meet, a space about a mile in length, 

 the favorite fishing ground of the alligators, where there is brack 

 ish water, which shifts its place according to the varying strength 

 of the river and the tide. Here were seen about fifty alligators, 

 each with head and neck raised above water, looking down the 

 stream at their enemies, before whom they had fled, terror- 

 stricken, and expecting an attack. The porpoises, no more than 

 a dozen in number, moved on in two ranks, and were evidently 

 complete masters of the field. So powerful, indeed, are they, 

 that they have been known to chase a large alligator to the bank, 

 and, putting their snouts under his belly, toss him ashore. 



We landed on the northeast end of St. Simon s Island, at Can 

 non s Point, where we were gratified by the sight of a curious 

 monument of the Indians, the largest mound of shells left by the 

 aborigines in any one of the sea islands. Here are no less than 

 ten acres of ground elevated in some places ten feet, and on an 

 average over the whole area, five feet above the general level, 

 composed throughout that depth of myriads of cast-away oyster- 

 shells, with some mussels, and here and there a modiola and 

 helix. They who have seen the Monte Testaceo near Rome, 

 know what great results may proceed from insignificant causes, 

 where the cumulative power of time has been at work, so that a 

 hill may be formed out of the broken pottery rejected by the pop 

 ulation of a large city. To them it will appear unnecessary to 

 infer, as some antiquaries have done, from the magnitude of these 

 Indian mounds, that they must have been thrown up by the sea. 

 In refutation of such an hypothesis, we have the fact, that flint 

 arrow-heads, stone axes, and fragments of Indian pottery have 

 been detected throughout the mass. The shell-fish heaped up at 

 Cannon s Point, must, from their nature, have been caught at a 



