About one hundred miles to the north of Tampa are numerous sand islets. Upon one of these was situated the old settlement of Cedar Keys. I was fortunate in meeting there a good seaman and enthusiastic antiquary named Clarke, who had made his home at that place. He was well acquainted with the various channels and bays of the coast, and in consequence of the interest that he felt in all that related to the customs of the Indian tribes, had gathered together a store of information that was exceedingly curious. He had also made discoveries respecting the haunts of the buccaneers, and knew of stories about hidden treasure. Fragments of old vessels that were supposed to have belonged to the pirates had been found, and clearings in the forest had been noticed, where it is supposed they formed their camps when the crews were landed. This part of the Florida coast with its tortuous channels and land-locked bays is precisely the position that buccaneers would have chosen for careening their vessels and for all purposes that required concealment after their raids upon the Spaniards. Upon one of the islands near the main-land there was an ancient kitchen midden or shell mound of unusual size. We found that it extended along the beach for eight hundred yards. It averaged eighty yards in width and was forty feet high. It was composed principally of large oyster shells, but there were also the shells of clam fish and numerous smaller shells. The mound throughout its length presented on its face a series of alternate layers of earth, about half-an-inch thick. The thickness of these intervening deposits of shells was greater than at Damariscotta in Maine, from which fact it may be inferred that the tribes who came here were more numerous, or that they were capable of extraordinary powers of consuming oysters. Upon cutting away portions of the outer slope of the mound, we found many fish bones and quantities of fragments of broken pottery. Not far from the shell mound was an ancient Indian burial place. Captain Clarke had made excavations into it, and amongst the accumulation of bones he had found some flint arrow heads and a few rude stone axes. I examined these and noticed that they were similar to those that had been found in several of the burial mounds of the Iroquois. As I wished to see this mound for the purpose of ascertaining certain points respecting the methods of burial adopted by the Florida Indians, Captain Clarke proposed that we should make an examination of it.