THE GRAVE OF THE SILENT HUNTER. 207 



"These flat rocks seem to be regular this must be the 

 sepulchre, coffin, or whatever you choose to call it !" he con- 

 tinued, as he scratched away. " By Jove ! look through that 

 crack I can see the skull !" 



I knelt beside him, and sure enough a human skull was 

 visible in the shallow sarcophagus. I immediately proposed 

 to remove the stone, and take the skull out. I was at the 

 time a vehemently ardent student of the new science of Gall 

 and Spurzehim, and would cheerfully have risked my life for 

 any such opportunity as this for examining the skull of a man 

 whose character must evidently have been so very marked and 

 extraordinary. It was no vulgar curiosity that caused me to 

 disregard the slight remonstrance of Charlie, who muttered 

 something about the pity to disturb the old fellow's rest. I 

 reverently lifted the thin flat stone, about eighteen inches in 

 length by six in breadth, which lay across the grave over the 

 head, and could then see the structure of the whole as well as 

 the great portion of the skeleton. 



The grave was only about eighteen inches deep by about the 

 same width, and was lined bottom and sides with flat unhewn 

 stones of the same size of that I had taken from over the head, 

 and the rest of the cover was the same, as well as what we 

 call the head-stone, which stood an inch and a half above the 

 surface. I immediately recognized the sort of stone sarco- 

 phagus or grave, which is to be found in thousands, covering 

 sometimes miles of ground in the southern part of Kentucky 

 and portions of Tennessee. The people adopting this curious 

 mode of sepulture were extinct at a period earlier than the 

 remotest reach of the tradition of the present aboriginal races, 

 as we vainly enough call them ! I have often examined these 

 graves where you could not make a step for miles but upon 

 one. It was evidently a pigmy race, for these graves ave- 

 rage not more than three feet in length. It was from these 

 ancient burial grounds that the old hunter had obtained his 

 idea of sepulture. Who this singular people were, will pro- 



