136 MORTUARY CUSTOMS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 
that tradition among the Aleuts assigned Kagamale, the island in question, as the last 
resting-place of a great chief, known as Karkhayahouchak. Last year the captain 
was in the neighborhood of Kagamale in quest of sea-otter and other furs, and he bore 
up for the island, with the intention of testing the truth of the tradition he had heard. 
He had more difficulty in entering the cave than in finding it, his schooner having to 
beat on and off shore for three days. Finally he succeeded in affecting a landing, and 
clambering up the rocks he found himself in the presence of the dead chief, his family 
and relatives. 
The cave smelt strongly of hot sulphurous vapors. With great care the mummies 
were removed, and all the little trinkets and ornaments scattered around were also 
taken away. 
In all there are eleven packages of bodies. Only two or three have as yet been 
opened. The body of the chief is inclosed in a large basket-like structure, about four 
feet in height. Outside the wrappings are finely wrought sea-grass matting, exquis- 
itely close in texture, and skins. At the bottom is a broad hoop or basket of thinly 
cut wood, and adjoining the center portions are pieces of body armor composed of 
reeds bound together. The body is covered with the fine skin of the sea-otter, always 
a mark of distinction in the interments of the Aleuts, and round the whole package 
are stretched the meshes of a fish-net, made of the sinews of the sea lion; also those 
of a bird-net. There are evidently some bulky articles inclosed with the chief’s body, 
and the whole package differs very much from the others, which more resemble, in 
their brown-grass matting, consignments of crude sugar from the Sandwich Islands 
than the remains of human beings. The bodies of a pappoose and of a very little 
child, which probably died at birth or soon after it, have sea-otter skins around them. 
One of the feet of the latter projects, with a toe-nail visible. The remaining mum- 
Ynies are of adults. 
One of the packages has been opened, and it reveals a man’s body in tolerable preser- 
vation, but with a large portion of the face decomposed. This and the other bodies 
were doubled up at death by severing some of the muscles at the hip and knee joints 
and bending the limbs downward horizontally upon the trunk. Perhaps the most 
peculiar package, next to that of the chief, is one which ineloses in a single matting, 
with sea-lion skins, the bodies of aman and woman. ‘The collection also embraces a 
couple of skulls, male and female, which have still the hair attached to the scalp. 
The hair has changed its color toa brownishred. The relies obtained with the bodies 
include afew wooden vessels scooped out smoothly; a piece of dark, greenish, flat 
stone, harder than the emerald, which the Indians use to tan skins; a scalp-lock of jet- 
black hair; a small rude figure, which may haye been a very ugly doll or an idol; two 
or three tiny carvings inivory of the sea-lion, very neatly executed ; a comb, a neck- 
let made of bird’s claws inserted into one another, and several specimens of little bags, 
and a cap plaited out of sea-grass and almost water-tight. 
In Cary’s translation of Herodotus (1853, p. 180) the following passage 
occurs which purports to describe the manner in which the Macrobrian 
Ethiopians preserved their dead. It is added, simply as a matter of 
curious interest, nothing more, for no remains so preserved have ever 
been discovered. 
After this, they visited last of all their sepulchres, which are said to be prepared 
from crystal in the following manner. When they have dried the body, either as the 
Egyptians do, or in some other way, they plaster it all oyer with gypsum, and paint it, 
making it as much as possible resemble real life; they then put round it a hollow 
column made of erystal, which they dig up inabundance, andiseasily wrought. The 
body being in the middle of the column is plainly seen, nor does it emit an unpleas- 
ant smell, nor is it in any way offensive, and it is all visible as the body itself. The 
nearest relations keep the column in their houses for a year, offering to it the first- 
