Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/376

362 land have been inundated, and are now deeply covered with drifting sand in this immediate neighborhood. At this point is the great dune known on the Coast Survey charts as Friar's Head. Its top is 150 feet above tide, but it stands on the bank which is half that height, so that 75 feet of that elevation is drifting sand. It was originally formed many yards inland, as others are continually



forming, but, by the ceaseless wearing away of the bluffs, it is now upon their brink. It is evidently of considerable age, as its wind-ward slope is covered by a thick growth of beach-grass, bayberry and other bushes, with stunted trees of beach and cedar quite at its top.

From this point the weird architecture of the sand-hills is singularly impressive. There is formed, to the southeast of Friar's Head, a great semicircle of sand, between which and the dune is a floor of several acres in extent swept by the winds. This floor, the original surface of the drift now laid bare, is rich in the remains of an old Indian settlement. Hundreds of specimens—including arrow-heads of flint, jasper, and quartz, axes of various sizes, and other articles of utility—have been picked up.

The sand blown from this spot and from the flanks of the dune constitutes the semicircular wall spoken of. It is one-eighth of a mile inland, and lies directly against a forest of oak and pine, burying many of the trees to a height of thirty to forty feet, only their dead and barkless tops being visible. On the surface of these sands beach-grass of several kinds, and young pine-trees (Pinus rigida) maintain