84 BUREAU or AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 76 



There were cairns, now totally destroyed, at two places on the 

 ridfi:e over which passes the road from Devil's Elbow to Spring 

 Creek. 



WOODLAND HOLLOW CAVE 



A minor ravine, known as Woodland Hollow, opens into a small 

 unnamed creek a mile. above its junction Avith Big Piney River at 

 the Devil's Elbow. In the west slope of this ravine is a large cave, 

 named from its location. Through the middle part the floor is 

 muddy ; along the wall on the left, dry cave earth, with a width of 

 20 to 30 feet, extends for TO feet from the entrance, its surface 4 

 feet above the level of the wet floor. A smaller amount of dry earth 

 lies along the opposite wall. The sides of the cavern recede at the 

 bottom, the dry earth passing under them. No estimate can be made 

 as to the total depth of the deposits. At the mouth of a ground-hog 

 burrow were two bone perforators, potsherds, fragments of bones, 

 and pieces of worked flint, including two knives, which had been 

 thrown out by the animal. Two mortar stones were found on the 

 margin of the dry earth. 



The cave belongs to Philip Becker, of St. Louis, who peremptorily 

 refused to allow any examination whatever to be made; the only 

 case in the whole region where cheerful permission was not given 

 for any amount of excavation desired. 



Three cairns, all demolished, stood on the Stuart property, half a 

 mile from Woodland Cave. 



There is a cairn on top of Lost Hill, half a mile south of Blue, or 

 Shanghai, Spring on Big Piney. 



AVALLED GRAVES AT DEVIL's ELBOW (26) 



Three miles above the point at which it passes out of the hills into 

 the bottom lands on its Avay to the Gasconade, the Big Piney River 

 doubles on itself with an abrupt curve, which raftsmen haA^e named 

 " The DeAal's Elbow." For more than a mile above and beloAv this 

 bend the stream floAvs in opposite directions in nearly parallel east 

 and west channels around the foot of a spur from the high land to 

 the west. 



Into the Elbow, on its outer curve, three ravines from the east and 

 southeast open within a fourth of a mile. They form the boundaries 

 of two very narrow ridges or " hog-backs," which terminate in pre- 

 cipitous slopes near the river. For some distance back from the 

 points the limestone bedrock crops out, a slight accumulation of earth 

 in the crevices supporting a scanty covering of weeds but being 

 insufficient to permit the growth of trees or bushes ; hence the term 

 " balds " by which they are locally known. The ridges haA^e a grad- 

 ual and nearly uniform slope toward the summit of the hill, which 



