172 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS OF THE SAVANNAH RIVER. 



which borders the river in high water and is itself submerged in times of freshet. 

 The northernmost mound was chosen for investigation. It was the usual shape, a 

 greatly truncated cone with .markedly level summit plateau. The diameter of base 

 was 68 feet; of the summit plateau, 36 feet. Measured from the terrace on which 

 it stands, its average height is 5 feet 4 inches, though, to an observer looking from 

 the north and including the height of the terrace, its altitude would seem much 

 greater. Trenches, aggregating 45 feet in length from 3 to 4 feet wide and from 5 

 to 6 feet deep, were dug into the summit plateau. About 5 feet down there seemed 

 to be a black basal line indicating the original surface. The mound was of unstrati- 

 fied clay with occasional fire-places, perhaps in use during its construction. Three 

 or four sherds were met with, and 5 feet from the surface was a deposit of small 

 fragments of calcined bones, some of which were undoubtedly human. Probably 

 this mound was domiciliary and the burial incidental. 



Stony Bluff, Burke County, Ga. 



At Stony Bluff landing, about 131 miles by water above Savannah, the solid 

 ground comes to the water's edge with masses of rock above the surface. This 

 place has been the site of a great aboriginal workshop, the fields for acres around 

 being covered with chips, spalls, cores, nodules and unfinished implements of chert. 

 At places the deposit is such as to interfere with cultivation. The owner informed 

 us that until recently, man}' interesting implements could be collected there and, as 

 it was, we gathered a number of arrowheads and the like in the last stage of 

 completion. 



Mounds near Demerie's Ferry, Burke County, Ga. (2). 



Demerie's ferry is about 161 miles by water, above Savannah. About three- 

 quarters of a mile in a southerly direction from the ferry were two low mounds, 

 kindly placed at our disposition by the owner, Mr. H. H. D'Antignac, of Augusta, 

 Ga. These mounds had been dug into before. In the larger, human bones were 

 at two points. Our investigation of the smaller was without result. 



Mounds near Shell Bluff, Burke County, Ga. (3). 



Shell bluff, so called from a deposit of fossil oyster-shells, is 163 miles from 

 Savannah, following the course of the river. 



About half a mile in a west-southwesterly course from the river, in a cultivated 

 field, were two low mounds greatly spread out by the plough and thoroughly dug 

 through before our visit. 



On the summit of a hill overlooking the field on one side and the river on the 

 other, was a mound two feet in height and 52 feet across. The mound was made 

 mainly of red clay which underlies the sand of the hill. We were not entirely 

 satisfied as to the nature of the mound, which contained several modern burials with 

 coffin-nails, etc. It may have been a domiciliary mound utilized in later times. 



