[HILL-TOUT] PREHISTORIC MAN IN BRITISH COLUMBIA 107 
that the first layers of this midden could hardly have been laid down 
much later than the beginning of our own era. That this particular 
midden-pile was slowly formed through the centuries, and was not the 
rapid accumulations of a large body of people, is more than probable 
from the fact that there are on its surface, at some distance from each 
other, four or five crowns or eminences—due, as I have personally ascer- 
tained, not to any local elevation of the subsoil, but wholly to an increase 
in the midden-mass itself—which, from what we know of the mode of 
more recent accumulations of the kind, we may reasonably infer were old 
family centres. From these features, as well as from many other minor 
ones, such as the scarcity of relics, in comparison with other camping- 
grounds where large communities are known to have once dwelt, it may 
fairly be concluded that this midden was the refuse-heap of a few families 
only; and when it is remembered what an enormous mass of stuff there 
is in it, we are bound, on any reasonable hypothesis, to allow a very con- 
siderable time for its accumulation. And from the fact that the midden 
is found to overlie with a sharp line of division the clean, coarse gravel of 
the Drift—which, as far as I have been able to discover, shows little or 
no trace of vegetable matter, whereas the soil in the immediate vicinity of 
the midden and all along this bank is rich, dark and loamy to a depth of 
from a few inches to over a foot — it is pretty certain there was a set- 
tlement on this bank before the appearance of post-glacial vegetation in 
that district. Then the midden-mass itself bears unmistakable testimony 
to its extreme age, nearly everything taken from it, except the stones, 
being in the last stage of decay ; an instance of which is the condition of 
the shell remains. Generally speaking, the shells when taken out whole, 
which happens rarely, all crumble to pieces at the touch, even when they 
bear no marks of fire on them, And that the clam shell, at any rate, is 
exceedingly endurable is clear from the fact that trees of over half a mil- 
lennium’s growth are repeatedly found along Burrard Inlet growing over 
refuse-heaps and gripping with their roots whole clam shells, as perfect 
and firm as the day they were thrown out. I have shells in my posses- 
sion that cannot be less than five centuries old, from the position in which 
they were found, but yet it would puzzle anybody to pick them out from 
a number of others of the same kind trom which the fish were taken only 
a few years ago, There are numerous other signs besides this that speak of 
extreme age. It rarely happens that a skullis taken out whole; it generally 
falls to pieces in handling, Then again, not a particle of wood has been 
found in the midden so far, unless it be the rotting rootlets of the trees 
that penetrate the mass to a depth of several feet. Axe- and tomahawk- 
heads, which were undoubtedly once fastened into wooden hafts or 
handles, are quite common; but where they are found there is never any 
trace of their wooden hafts to be seen. These and sundry other unmis- 
takable evidences all seem to the writer to speak clearly of the antiquity 
