SCHUMACHER ANCIENT GRAVES IN CALIFOANIA. 337 



be foimd, but hardly even any bones. My reason for supposing these 

 heaps to be the remains of merely temporary camps, is the small num- 

 ber of flint knives, spear-heads, and other imi:)lements found therein, and 

 the total absence of any chips that might indicate the occasional pres- 

 ence of a workshop where domestic tools and weapons of war were man- 

 ufactured — a something that immediately strikes the accustomed eye in 

 viewing regularly well-established settlements. On further examining 

 this class of heaps by a vertical section, we find layers of sand recur- 

 ring at short intervals, which seem to indicate that they were visited at 

 fixed seasons ; those vioddings exposed toward the northwest being 

 vacated while the wind from southwest was blowing sand over them, 

 and, mutatis mutandis, the same happening with regard to camps with 

 a southwest aspect while the northwest wind i)revailed. It is fair, then, 

 to suppose that these places were only the temporary residences of the 

 savages to whom they appertained ; that they were tenanted during 

 favorable times and seasons for the gathering of mollusks, which, 

 having been extracted from their shells, were dried in the sun for trans- 

 portation to the distant permanent villages. The comparatively small 

 qnantities of shell-remains now found at these regular settlements going 

 also to support this theory. No graves have been found near these tem- 

 porary camps. I discovered, however, one skeleton of an Indian, in con- 

 nection with which were thirteen arrow-heads, but it was plainly to be 

 seen that the death of this person had happened during some short sojourn 

 of a tribe at this place, as the burial had been effected in a hasty and 

 imperfect manner, and the grave was without the usual lining which, 

 as we sliall see, is found in all the other tombs of this region. 



On the extremity of Point Sal, the ncuthern projection of which is 

 covered by large sand-drifts, we find, down to the very brink of the 

 steep and rocky shore, other extensive shell-deposits, which, with few 

 exceptions, consist of the Mytihis Californianus and of bones ; flint chips 

 being also found, though very sparsely in comparison with the mass of 

 other remains. The sea having washed oat the base of this declivity, 

 and the top-soil having, as a consequence, slid down, we see on the edge 

 of the cliff shell-layers amounting in all to a thickness of four or five 

 feet; that part closest to the underlying rock appearing dark and ash- 

 like, while the deposit becomes better preserved as the surface is neared. 

 At other places, for example, on the extreme outer spur of this Point 

 Sal, the shell-remains have been so conglomerated or cemented together 

 by extreme antiquity as to overhang and beetle over the rocks for 

 quite a distance. 



Leaving the temporary camps, we shall visit the regular settlements 

 of the ancient aborigines. Traces of these are found near the southern 

 Point Sal, at a place where it turns eastward at an angle of something 

 less than 90C', behind the first small hill of the steep ridge which trends 

 easterly into the country, and which, up to this spot, is, on its northern 

 slope, covered with drift-sand and partially grown over with stunted her- 

 22 s 



