than the rest, was of medium size and remarkably round. The others seemed of similar size and type. The teeth of all were well preserved, and did not exhibit any appearance of having been faulty during the lifetime of their owners. None of the bones seemed to have belonged to persons above the average size, with the exception of one femur. Neither the vertebral nor pelvic bones, the ribs, the omoplates, nor the bones of the hands and feet were preserved. These human remains were from 5 to 7½ feet beneath the surface of the ground, and 10 or 12 feet above the level of the bay.
After an interval of about six weeks, I again visited the spot. About 2 feet of the hill had. caved away since my first visit; but the bone deposit was still unexhausted, for I found three more skulls and several limb bones, all of which broke into fragments in extracting them from the compact sand.
I was disappointed in not finding stone arrow-heads in the caved sand. But my search for them was not thorough. There is no reason, however, to doubt that these are aboriginal remains. Their imperfect state of preservation in any kind of earth, very conservative of organic substances, alone warrants the conclusion that they are ancient, which is reinforced by an argument which I will here state. These remains are found at the southern extremity of a sand ridge about 2 miles long from north to south, and varying in height from 20 to 40 or 50 feet, and which was evidently formed while the gulf beat directly upon the shore of the mainland. But ever since the long, sandy islands extending parallel with our coast were heaped up by the action of the waves and currents of the sea, the only communication between the gulf and the interior bays, or lagoons, has been through a few narrow channels called "bayous." The consequence is, that the sandy materials of which the "dunes" are formed, instead of reaching the shore of the mainland as in former ages, are now deposited on the gulf side of the islands and blown up by the east and southeast winds into hillocks similar to, but generally less elevated than, those which were formerly heaped by the same agency upon the mainland.
Now, on the assumption that these human remains, in accordance with the universal custom of North American savages, were only interred to the depth of 2 feet at most, several feet of sand must subsequently have been blown over them to account for the depth at which they were found, and the sand for this purpose must have been transported to the adjacent beach by the currents of the gulf. Hence, I conclude that the remains were deposited in the "dune" before the gulf was cut off from the mainland by the formation of the chain of island barriers above mentioned. The sand ridge containing the osseous relics has been preserved from the wasting effects of the winds by the thickets of dwarf oak and sweet bay with which it is overgrown. Some of the live oaks at its eastern base are of sufficient girth to indicate an age of two centuries. Other oaks of the same species a short distance south
