1879. } Were they Mound-Builders ? 639 
embankment for a railroad, and tradition says that many skeletons 
and relics were unearthed at this time, the bones being buried 
under the roadway, and that the relics, through the customary 
ignorance of the workmen, were destroyed and lost. 
In Fig. 2 I have given a section of the place which shows the 
original form and what remains of the graveyard sufficiently well; 
ye 
pa je 74 os hy 
cry ere tt (tpn ole, Zt pat, 
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i 
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aa fla the 
the point between a and å is ner the graves which I opened 
were found ; its conformation and the character of the soil sug- 
gested that it might have been somewhat artificially altered. 
So much digging had been done previously to little purpose, 
that I had little faith that any graves remained undisturbed, but 
a friend of mine accidentally hearing that a curious pipe had 
recently been found, we visited the place one afternoon in Novem- 
ber, too late, however, to do more than a little hasty and super- 
ficial digging. Examinations of places of this kind, containing 
graves of an ancient date, should of course be made with care, 
else will most of the bones and interesting relics be destroyed, or 
at any rate no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at in regard 
to the manner of burial, probable age, &c. 
Although our digging at this time was hasty, and done a little 
recklessly, I was fortunate in finding one grave, from which we 
obtained several relics of interest ; the most curious being a tube, 
the shape and general appearance of which is represented by 
Fig. 3. This tube case, being covered with a dark earthy deposit, 
we were led at first to think was made of clay, but upon closer 
examination with a powerful magnifier, I am inclined to think 
that it is of stone, steatite perhaps. Under the glass there is none 
of that appearance of pounded shell or stone so generally 
observed in all early fictile fabrics. The rings and marks made 
by the boring tool are also plainly seen in all of them. 
