﻿26 FIELD AND FOREST. 



was arranged in layers, as if the tribe al times absented itself for a 

 year or more, so that a stratum of leaves, weeds and rubbish gathered 

 over the pile before they returned and added fresh layers of shells. 

 It was a loose, easily worked mass and a negro help was employed in 

 hauling the shells that had been raked elear of other materials to a 

 conical mound, which was being built up of alternate layers of brush 

 wood and shed Is and in due lime to be fixed and converted into lime. 

 A small mound of slacked lime, close bv, showed where a burning had 

 been completed and was ready for use. The owner of the works was 

 a virtuoso in lbs way, and had laid aside such unusual Objects as he had 

 met with in digging down his oyster piles, as scraps of Indian pottery, 

 some bones which had once been part of fish or wild fowl, some flinty 

 arrow heads, which he irreverently called Indian stones, but, chief of 

 all, he had a fine pair of buck'.s antlers in excellent preservation. 

 These he had nailed lust to a large tree, out of reach of predatory 

 hands, and regarded them as his sign of business, his token, his coat 

 of arms, or his trade mark.. The lands in the vicinity were exceed- 

 ingly impoverished and needeei all the restoratives that could be ob- 

 tained, and it was only when the as yet untried business of peach 

 growing was started that they began to appreciate in value. 



A short time afterwards a similar but smaller heap was found a few 

 miles east of the City of Baltimore, on the Canton County grounds. 

 The composition of it was the same, but with an unusual amount of 

 broken pottery. The plough had gone through it long since, levelled 

 it to an even surface and a dwelling is erected over the spot. It is 

 thus that, in one way or another, these traces of Indian residence, on 

 our shores, are fast disappearing. 



The oyster, in many places on the Chesapeake Bay, can yet be ob- 

 tained at low tide by wading out a few yards from the shore, and it is 

 supposed that the Indians obtained their supplies in this manner, or 

 possibly by diving when the water was deeper, dredging or tonging 

 being devices for taking the bivalves unknown to them. The oyster 

 was opened in a peculiar manner, a deep nick or notch being made 

 near the Jiinge and some wedge shaped stone implement inserted to 

 cut the adductor muscle. This mark is left on all the shells opened by 

 Indians, and constitutes another argument, if any were wanting, to 

 prove these heaps to be the kitchen refuse of the savage. 



E. Foreman. 



