"I have found in several mounds," says my informant, "glass beads and silver ornaments, and, in one instance, a part of a rifle-barrel, which were evidently buried with the dead. These, however, were secondary interments, the graves being upon the top, or sides, or near the base of the mound, and only a few feet deep. Never but in one case have I discovered any article of European manufacture interred with the dead in whose honor the mound was clearly erected. Upon opening a small earth-mound on the Georgia coast, a few miles below Savannah, I found a clay vessel, several flint arrow-heads, a hand-axe of stone, _and a portion of an old-fashioned sword_ deposited with the decayed bones of the skeleton. This tumulus was conical in shape, about seven feet high, and possessed a base diameter of some twenty feet. It contained only one skeleton, and that lay, with the articles I have enumerated, at the bottom of the mound, and on a level with the plain. The oaken hilt, most of the guard, and about seven inches of the blade of the sword still remained. The rest of the blade had perished from rust. Strange to say, the oak had best resisted the 'gnawing tooth of time.' This mound had never been opened or in any way disturbed, except by the winds and rains of the changing seasons. I have no doubt but that the interment was primary, and that all the articles enumerated were deposited with the dead before this mound-tomb was heaped above him. This, within the range of my observation, is an interesting and exceptional case. I am persuaded that mound-building, at least upon the Georgia coast, was abandoned by the natives very shortly after their primal contact with the whites." [Illustration: Fig. 5.]