1896.] obi [Cushiug. 



hanging, or else lying, tucked away in the houses or on the scaffolds 

 above, and had been washed out from or off of them into the water 

 alongside and below, had become water-logged and had gradually been 

 covered by mud and other debris and by the vegetal and other deposits 

 w^e found them in. 



By far the greater number of objects were, however, promiscuously 

 scattered — although, as I have said, more abundant between and around 

 the ends or along the edges of the low, submerged benches I have 

 described, than elsewhere. Not a few of them — and this was especially 

 the case w^ith long and originally more or less fragile articles like spear- 

 shafts and stays — appeared to have been broken in falling. Occasionally 

 we found fragments separated by considerable distance which, when 

 brought together, fitted perfectly. Not a few of the piles were thus 

 broken, and many of the lesser timbers ; while larger timbers, like the 

 comparatively gigantic sill, which lay along the edge of the northern 

 bench (in sections 29, 39, 40), were absolutely intact. They were ex- 

 cellent examples of primitive joinery ; yet so soft and pulpy, as a rule, 

 that on account of their great size and weight, we were unable to bring 

 them away, or even, without destroying, to disturb them. Some of the 

 broad, flc.t, notched staves — which I judged from considerations later 

 offered had been used as symbolic ancestral tablets, probably attached to 

 the gables of houses, or set up in altars — were lying on their edges; 

 while flat boards sometimes stood on end, and other long, slender articles, 

 stood slantingly upward, the lowermost ends or edges firmly stuck in 

 the clay-marl of the bottom. This was the case, for example, with the 

 beautifully shaped and pointed paddle which we found near the mouth 

 of the upper or inlet canal. Its sharp point was slantingly and deeply 

 embedded in the mud, while its long handle reached obliquely up nearly 

 to the surface of the muck, and was there, as may be seen by examina- 

 tion of the specimen itself (or of Fig. 8, in Plate XXXII), burned oft 

 slantingly on a line that must have corresponded to the original level of 

 the water, for at this point other charred specimens occurred, as though 

 here fire had added its destructiveness to the storm that demolished the 

 buildings or scaffolds from which all these things seemed to have fallen. 



From the fact that many of the objects lay suspended, as it were, in 

 the mud above the bottom, I judged that when these remains w^ere 

 thrown down into the little water court, the spaces between the house- 

 benches and around the borders of the quays at least, must have been 

 already choked up somewhat with debris or refuse and slime or mud ; 

 for out in the middle of the court where the deep open space occurred 

 throughout the channel between the two canals, little was found in the 

 way of art remains, except such as lay directly upon, or very near to, the 

 bottom. 



It may be seen that by a study of the distribution of these remains it 

 was easy to determine what had been the original average depth of the 

 water within the court, or at any rate, its depth at the time when these 



