Fig. 137.—Sketch showing part of surrounding Stockade with Mortised Beams.
The diameter of the island was about one hundred feet; and its superficies was thus occupied:—In the centre was a flat circular area about sixty feet in diameter. Then followed a double line of upright piles from 2 to 3 feet apart. These were bound together by short transverse beams with a hole, generally square, at each end ([Fig. 136]), into which the tops of the uprights penetrated, while others stretched along the circumference forming a firm network. The surface of these horizontal binders was about three feet above the level of the inner area, and thus the stockade presented the appearance of a breastwork. At the north-east corner this arrangement was more perfect than elsewhere (see sketch, [Fig. 137]) and constituted what was supposed to have been a landing stage, as from it a neatly-constructed flooring of wood extended for some yards inwards. Outside the stockade on the north side there was a mass of brushwood and stakes forming a kind of trellis-work, as if intended for further protection to the island. In the centre of the inner area there was a square portion, measuring 39 feet on each side, covered with closely laid beams of split stems of trees having the appearance and size of railway sleepers, which appeared to have been the flooring of a wooden house. This log-pavement (as we called it) had been Surrounded by a wooden wall, the stumps of which then only remained, and a line of similar stumps ran across it, from east to west, thus bisecting the building into two nearly equal compartments. The sides of this wooden foundation looked towards the four cardinal points, and its corners just reached to the surrounding stockades. On the surface of the wooden pavement were found some fragments of curiously worked beams and some large broad boards. Some were grooved and had also square-cut holes, in which both transverse and upright beams could be mortised. (See sketch, [Fig. 138].) A doorway, the stumps of the sideposts of which were readily distinguished, opened to the south; and in front, but more to the left, was an extensive refuse heap, in which many relics were found. This midden occupied the space between the south margin of the log-pavement and the surrounding stockades—some 10 or 12 feet in breadth by about double that in length.
Fig. 138.—Grooved and Mortised Beams lying over Log-Pavement.
