CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE ALABAMA RIVER. 345 



cultivation, it is a great landmark looming up from all directions. Though washed 

 by rain and by freshets it has fairly well retained its shape of a truncated cone, and 

 has been a place of refuge for stock when territory for miles around had been sub- 

 merged. Its height was 16 feet 7 inches; the diameter of its base, 108 feet, and 

 that of the summit plateau, about 50 feet. 



Owing to its advantage in flood time a great reduction in the height of the 

 mound was not deemed advisable. We were, however, permitted to dig through 

 the upper 6 feet. 



The mound, so far as investigated, was of much softer material than the 

 mound in the Thirty-Acre Field, being homogeneous, composed of sandy clay, 

 without layers of occupation, though midden refuse and marks of fire were present 

 in places. 



It transpired during the digging that the upper part of the mound had been in use 

 as a sort of cemetery in comparatively recent times. Curiously enough, as though 



44 JOUEN. A. N. S. PHILA., VOL. XL 



