98
THE "SALTING MOUNDS" OF ESSEX.
able to supply the key to some of the cyphers of our half-revealed
past history. At any rate, it appears highly probable that they are
of great antiquity. They have certainly been in existence for many
centuries.
The mounds exist only in the peculiar position described. I have
examined very many, but never saw one more than five feet above
high-water mark; and although I have spent many days along the
coast, and upon the marshes, I never saw or heard of one reaching
to low-water mark. They all seem singularly uniform in character
and composition. The majority of those I have seen are from two
to four and a half feet in depth, and have the same appearance at
the surface as when worked down to the base, with the exception, of
course, of the differences made upon the surface by vegetation, and,
in many cases, by centuries of cultivation. I have not yet examined
them sufficiently to tell their full number and extent; but among
those I have dug into, the largest was, as nearly as I could judge,
about thirty acres in area. The majority are smaller, but nearly all
are still of considerable size, ranging from half an acre to five acres
or more. The small ones are generally those most accessible for
removal; and as the neighbouring fields of stiff clay are improved
by the admixture of porous material from the mounds, they have
been dug away for this purpose to a large extent. Even the largest
consists almost entirely of the red burnt clay, and contains an enor-
mous number of fragments of pottery, bricks, and vessels, although
not one of these seems by any chance to be entire, and very few are
sufficiently perfect to indicate the capacity, or even the shape, of the
vessel or article to which they formerly belonged.
An old man who has lived all his life in the neighbourhood, and
has, for many years, been in the habit of carting away earth from a
mound, or "Red Hill," as he called it, told me that he had moved
many hundreds of loads, but had never found a single piece of whole
pottery, or a coin. He sometimes saw flints, but had not sufficient
knowledge to distinguish between a worked or chipped flint and
another ; nor could he be taught to see the difference, even with the
strong inducement offered him of unlimited beer and five shillings
apiece for all he found. I showed him the largest piece of pottery
I had picked up, and he said it was much larger than most pieces,
though he recollected having come across a few pieces larger—
perhaps nearly as large again.
Mixed with the earth in this and all the other mounds are large