babcock] THE NANTICOKE INDIANS 28 1
and a companion, with a rain-storm, took one of the latter by sur- prise, and we could not have been given anywhere a more dainty and tasteful room in which to sleep ; it had nothing costly in it, but everything was bright and pretty and perfect. In the four-poster bedstead, the brass stair-rods of the carpeted stairway, no less than in certain slight, winning quaintnesses of speech, there lingered a reminiscence of older fashions and times. There were prayers before breakfast and grace at every meal, for these people are conscientious in religious observance, though in an unostentatious way. No one could have been more cordial in their welcome than this good old couple, and it was to strangers whom they had never seen before.
We visited one Indian mound, which they identified as having that character by continuous tradition, though they could not say who made it nor when. I paced over the crown of it from one point of its circumference to the opposite, and determined that interval to be approximately forty-eight yards. It seems to be settling in height and probably spreading. The elder Mr Clark said it had lost two feet in elevation within his memory ; perhaps the sandiness of the soil may account for such subsidence. It is nearly as white as snow in parts of the field near by. Such a mound could have little more consistency than a sand-dune by the seashore, except where the roots of saplings and herbage have bound the shell of it together. There is a light growth of new timber over it, besides one large oak near the periphery, which, however, may be beyond the limit of the original mound. The present height seems not over fifteen feet, so that it is a very low and squat conoid. They told me of another tumulus, at a tributary of Indian river, known as Swan creek, where are also said to be the remains of a dam or some similar work.
The only distinctive thing that I observed in their architecture was a house with bright blue posts and corners, all the rest being white or nearly colorless. The effect was gay and primitive, not to say a little amusing.
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