For the purpose of examination, a tunnel was excavated into the mound from the east, a little one side of the center and on a level with the natural surface of the ground. When the point directly under the outer edge of the top of the mound was reached, holes were found containing fragments of rotted wood showing that stakes or palisades had been erected here when the mound was commenced. The sound of the pick indicating a cavity or different material below, the excavation was carried downward about 2 feet, when two skeletons were uncovered, fragments of which preserved are marked No. 1. The bones were packed in a small space, as though the bodies were crowded down, without much regard to position of hands, into a pit not exceeding 3 feet in length. One of the skulls is of especial interest, as possibly indicating that the remains are those of victims immolated in some sacrificial or burial rites. The side was crushed in, as if with a club. I have connected together the pieces of the upper jaw so that they retain the position in which they were found, a position which cannot with probability be supposed to be the result of the settling of the earth around it, if unbroken when buried. The bones of the bodies, although so friable that they could not be preserved, were entire, in positions indicating that the bodies had not been dismembered and forbidding the supposition that they were the remains of a cannibal feast. The excavation was carried forward as indicated on the plat and on a level with the location of the skeletons first found. It became evident at once that the material of which the mound was constructed was taken from the immediate neighborhood, it being composed of the same alluvial soil, full of the shells found on the surface, but in a much better state of preservation; but no arrow-heads, chippings of flints, or fragments of pottery now covering the surface were found. These would have been abundant if the mound had been erected subsequent to the manufacture of the pottery and arrow-heads at that place. Single fragments of pottery were found, but these were painted and of much better quality than those found on the surface. The mound was composed of alternate layers of earth and ashes, showing that a surface of the size of the top, when finished, was kept substantially level, and raised only 2 to 3 feet at a time, when fires were kindled, which must have been large or continued for a long time, as the amount of the ashes and charcoal abundantly indicates.