ance archaeologically. This pile of stone is about 280 feet long, and on an average 2 rods wide, and in the middle is about 30 inches high. The distance from the front face of the bluff to the middle of the stone wall is about 300 feet. The lengths were obtained by pacing, and the width and depth by tape-line. The middle of this inclosed space is from 15 to 20 feet higher than the edges, the slope being gradual. The whole space is covered with trees similar in size and appearance to those on the tops of the other bluffs. All around the bluff, from the front or south face to the east and west, the rocks are either perpendicular or overhanging; but on both sides back of the line of piled stone the top may easily be reached, as the distance from the summit of the bluff on its southern face to the more nearly level ground below decreases toward the north, being perhaps 50 feet at the eastern and 25 feet at the western end of the stone wall. This pile of stone across the neck of the bluff shows evidence of having been a wall. To see if there were any signs of regularity in its structure, and upon what base it had been constructed, we took out a cross-section of the stone in one place where they seemed to have been thrown down, and partial sections in several other places. First, the materials are sandstone, the same as that of the bluffs. Many of them are flat, all irregular, just as would occur in breaking up that kind of stone. In size they vary from some smaller than a man's head to those as large as one man can lift. They are built upon the ground and not upon the ledge of rocks, as the earth beneath the pile is the same as that constituting the top of the bluff, save that here there is no vegetable mold. Most of the larger stones are placed where was the base of the wall, seemingly with but little regularity. At the ends, where the hill is a little steep, the flat stones at the bottom are set on edge, and the next course so laid that its top surface would be nearly level, or sloping a little up the hill. This, of course, would make it easier to lay the succeeding stones. Where these stones came from is hard to tell. If there were only a few of them one might conclude that they were picked up from the surface of the inclosed area south of the wall and on the open space north of it. But there are not stone enough on the same area of the tops of the other bluffs to make such a pile. Part of them may have been obtained in that way and the rest brought there from above, where this bluff is not very high.
The question "why they were placed there?" seems to admit of but one answer—they were a means of defense. The fact that it has been known as Stone Fort ever since the country was settled implies that such has been the general opinion of the people acquainted with the place. It has been assumed, however, that it was the work of hunters for the purpose of a protection to their camp. I can hardly conceive that a party of hunters, for a temporary camp, would go to the trouble of gathering such a mass of stone as is represented in 280 feet long, 33 feet wide, and, on an average, 1½ feet high. It may have been the location of an Indian encampment in some former years, and built
