CHAPTER IV 



THE ANCIENT ISLANDERS 



WHEN I first visited the island of Santa Cata- 

 lina, the vicinity of the Hotel Metropole, 

 was represented by a spot so black that it 

 could be seen a long way offshore. It was a "kitchen 

 midden," a deposit on which the aborigines had lived 

 for ages, cooking on it, and having their camp-fires, 

 until the soil was thoroughly blackened. In this 

 were buried their household belongings of stone and 

 shell. 



When a trench is dug in any part of Avalon to-day, 

 especially along the north beach, shells, implements, 

 and ancient human bones are often found, and the 

 black earth crops out, telling the story of one of the 

 most interesting ancient archaeological treasure-houses 

 in America. Literally tons of mortars, pestles, and 

 implements of various kinds were taken from here in 

 the seventies. Professor Schumacker of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution first investigated the island in the 

 early seventies, and, with "Mexican Joe" as skilled 

 excavator, found a vast treasure in stone, shell, and 

 bone. English and Germans followed, and many fine 

 collections were secured. 



The remains are doubtless nearly all of the fifteenth 

 century; and some possibly thousands of years old. 

 Every canon having a beach on the north coast, I 

 found, in 1886, had its ancient tov/n-site — some large, 



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