346 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



successfully done. The Alaska Commercial Company has a 

 standing order to its agents to collect and preserve objects 

 of interest in ethnology and natural history, and the cabinet 

 of the Academy bears witness to the generosity of the com- 

 pany and the value of some of the material thus acquired. 

 Captain E. Hennig, of the company's service, with the com- 

 pany's schooner William Sutton, being employed in remov- 

 ing some hunters from the island of the Four Mountains, 

 was enabled, after seven unsuccessful attempts, to land at 

 the base of the cliff where the fallen rocks form a kind of 

 cave, and was directed by the natives to the exact spot. 

 Here he obtained twelve mummies in good condition, besides 

 several skulls of those which, being laid near the entrance 

 of the cave, had become injured by the weather. There 

 were also a moderate number of carvings and implements 

 found, though some natives, less superstitious than the rest, 

 had appropriated a quantity of w T eapons (reported to have 

 once been there) for use in hunting. The island being vol- 

 canic, and, in fact, still active, the soil is still warm, and the 

 atmosphere of the cave quite hot, which accounts for the ex- 

 tremely good preservation of the remains. Most of the 

 bodies were simply eviscerated, stuffed with grass, dried, 

 wrapped in furs and grass-matting, and then secured in a 

 water-proof covering of seal-hide. Two or three had had 

 much more pains bestowed upon them, and were of course 

 of much more interest. The story of their deposition is too 

 long to be given here, and is not particularly interesting, but 

 it includes the fate of an old chief of the island of the Four 

 Mountains and his family, all of whom were buried in the 

 cave. Among the others was a female, who died when with 

 child from a premature birth, brought on by an accident, 

 and the essential correctness of the tradition is attested by 

 the presence of a little mummy of the still-born infant. The 

 date of the first interment is very well fixed by the fact that 

 the old chief died the autumn before the spring in which the 

 Russians made their first appearance at the Four Mountains ; 

 and consequently none of the bodies are much over one hun- 

 dred years old. Hence they should not be confounded with 

 the ancient pre-historic remains which I have formerly de- 

 scribed in the Academy's proceedings. 



'The mummies of real interest were few in number. The 



