RAMBLES IN FLORIDA. 459 
perhaps, the remains of many feasts here enjoyed and cele- 
brated by the tribe of which Hirrihigua * was chief. From 
a well-hole that was dug to the depth of eight feet in the 
principal heap, arrowheads of chalcedony, a sinker of “coral 
stone,” and a spoon-shaped implement} made from a piece 
of a large conch-shell, Busycon perversum, were obtained. 
Fourteen species of shells were collected of which nine are 
the same as found at the Cedar Keys Mounds, and include the 
Species that are living most abundantly at the present day, 
| and which were generally sought for as food by the aborig- 

inees; the other five speciest are small shells, too small to 
be collected for the above purpose and were probably carried 
1 to the heaps, from their being attached to the shells of the 
| edible mollusks. No fragments of pottery were detected, 
and nothing to indicate that the mound or any of the heaps 
= Were used for burial purposes; the ground outline of this 
series of heaps is quite irregular, and it appears rather to 
have been the result of accident than in conformity to any 
; plan. 
i; From the shell-heaps to the end of Rocky Point is at least 
| a mile; the road or trail follows along the ridge, which con- 
sists of beach rubble and debris upon the top of an ancient 
coral reef; at many places as well as at the end of the point, 
the coral-rock crops out, and in some localities it is daily 
Washed by the tide; at the water's edge are mangroves, and 
along the sides of the ridge are pines, palmettoes,$ and but- 



*Irving's Conquest of Florida, Ed. 1869, p. 59. 
tin the Ethnological department of the Smithsonian Institution may be seen (S. I. 
No. 5988) an implement from Chattanooga, Tennessee, collected by Mr. McRead, of 
“ame form, and made of a piece of shell of apparently the same species. 
One of these species, bY MORE AAR T idalis Kiener, is q i p y 
I am inclined to believe that the so-called pearls that were seen by DeSoto and his 
men consisted in f th ile 
m. p. 


i an increasing value. It is the 
palm possesses a great, and to this country, sns ship 


