CAVE RELICS OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. 29 



were wedged. Large numbers of fragments of rock had also fallen from above, 

 which aggregated several tons in weight, and had to be removed piece by piece ; 

 a work of no little magnitude. 



The materials, after they were removed, and the debris carefully searched for 

 anything remaining, were hardly of a character to afford a basis for a general 

 description of the method employed in treating the dead. Indeed we would 

 have been able to comprehend the purport of but little of what we collected, 

 without the assistance of the information we had received from the natives on 

 the spot, and those at Kadiak, and elsewhere. 



The collection comprised only a single implement, a sharp-pointed piece of 

 bone, which looked as if it might have been used in making some of the more 

 delicate portions of the carving. 



The remainder consisted entirely of wooden carvings (14941 et seq.) and 

 human bones, particularly crania, of which thirteen of various ages were 

 collected. Several mummies wrapped in matting and seal skin, similar to those 

 described from Kagamil, were observed in another crevice. The crania only 

 were taken, as the rest of the remains presented nothing very remarkable and 

 were very much decayed. The remains of the cases of several mummies of 

 children were found in the same place and some bits of fine matting. 



The wooden carvings presented a great variety of forms, of which it seems 

 desirable to make only a general enumeration. Most of them were of a cork-like 

 consistency from great age ; nearly all were injured or broken ; some crumbled 

 under the brush used to remove loose dirt from them. The best preserved 

 specimens, as previously related, had been removed by others. In 1868 Captain 

 Chas. Iliedell gave me a perfect mask which had been obtained from this locality 

 and is now in the National Museum. In 1873 I obtained a few more in good 

 condition and a very large number of fragments, of which I collected only the 

 better preserved pieces. The nose, being the thickest portion, is longest pre 

 served ; and there must have been fifty noses among the debris which deeply 

 covered the floor of the crevice. 



These masks were all different from one another, but made on one general 

 type. They would average twenty inches in height and sixteen in width if the 

 convexity be taken into account. They were nearly all similar in having a 

 broad thick but not flattened nose, straight and not projecting eyebrows, thin 

 lips and a wide mouth, into which little wooden teeth were inserted. They also 

 agreed in being painted in various colors, usually black and red ; in having 

 bunches of hair pegged in to indicate a beard ; sometimes hair across the upper 

 edge of the forehead ; in being pierced only in the nostrils ; and in having the 

 ears large, flat, and usually pegged on, much above the normal plane in human 

 beings, generally at the upper posterior corners of the mask. 



Varied patterns were lightly chiselled or painted on the cheeks in many cases. 



