1897.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 173 



With some it was a crown, with others plaited bands, and with 

 still others what might be taken to represent plumes. This ap- 

 pears to indicate that each family had its group of urns with 

 special distinguishing marks, but what this may mean or 

 whether my seeing them so placed was simply accident or co- 

 incidence, would require careful investigation. 



It might reasonabl3'^ be expected that bones placed in a tight 

 clay cylinder and surrounded by compact sand would endure 

 for a long period, but these are crumbling to pieces and are 

 sometimes nothing but fragments mingled with dust. This fact, 

 together with their position below the usual water line and with 

 three sediments each marking a complete stage overlying them, 

 argues a very great antiquity. It is a curious fact that less 

 than half a mile from them and thence extending some distance 

 back in the country there is a rising ground filled with beds of 

 oyster shells that appear like a species of Titon, resembling one 

 of the extinct Miocene types. 



These beds of fossils lie very near the human remains and 

 topographically are above them, but to assume that they are 

 stratigraphically so, would be a daring assertion. It is more 

 probable that the human remains represent a subsidence at that 

 point, and that the three overlying strata indicate changing con- 

 ditions of sediment in filling the collapsed surfaces; and, as 

 many such sediments are found along the river courses, it seems 

 only reasonable to suppose that all these are of recent times 

 geologically considered. 



The subsidence of considerable stretches of country in this 

 part of the world has been forcibly illustrated in our times. 

 During the great earthquake of 1893 I was in Rio Hacha. Con- 

 trary to common belief in regard to such occurrences the day 

 had been bright and pleasant. It was about nine o'clock in the 

 evening and I had just determined to stop work, when a strange 

 noise and sudden apprehensiveness filled the air. I hurried to 

 the back of the house to see what it could mean, and then, noting 

 that a large building near by was swaying, and hearing the 

 church bells tolling with a deep unearthly sound and hesitating 

 irregularly, I knew what was happening and hurried to the street. 

 While crossing the rooms I could hardly stand, and, just as I 

 reached the door, a final shudder seemed to run through all the 

 earth, then an instant of bewildering silence, and life went on 

 again. 



Rio Hacha had had a lucky escape. For days afterward reports 

 came telling of the destruction of life and property over hundred 

 of miles of country. Later, a party of Indians coming in to trade, 

 informed us that the little town of Laguna over toward the Ven- 



