78 ANTHROPOLOGICAL, SURVEY IN ALASKA [ETH. ANN. 46 



Work as never before. Decide to utilize the rare opportunity to 

 the limit, and to take the whole skeletons, not merely the skulls, leav- 

 ing only the few fresher ones and those that are badly damaged. A 

 great Sunday ; burial after burial ; opening the wooden grave — 

 taking out and marking on the spot bone after bone — fighting mos- 

 quitoes all the while — and packing temporarily in any convenient 

 recei^tacle. Fortunately there are quite a few boxes and pails and 

 oil cans on the spot, left by the dredge people and the few natives 

 who evidently sometimes come to the place. At about 2 eat lunch — 

 coffee (the Eskimo put what was for three cups into about two 

 quarts of water, so there is but a suggestion of coffee), raw smoked 

 fish for me and eggs with bacon (left over from breakfast) for my 

 companion, and on again until about 5 p. m. or a little later. Last 

 two or three hours, however, work with some difficulty. A gnat bit 

 me in an eyelid, or got into my eye, and that has now swollen so 

 that I can hardly see with it. My Eskimo, however, is about all I 

 could wish. He just looks at me working in a matter-of-fact way, 

 and carries the filled boxes, or looks around for something I could 

 take with me, and even helps on a few occasions with the bones, find- 

 ing evidently the whole proceeding quite right and natural. Brings 

 me, among other things, an old copper teakettle, but to his wonder I 

 do not want it and leave it. I find a fine large walrus-ivory doll 

 and a handsome decorated "kantag" (wooden bowl), besides smaller 

 objects, and also a large piece of a poor quality clay pot (no pottery 

 now), with a fragment of a decorated border as on the lower Yukon. 



Pack up, we load on the boat — lucky now she is so spacious — get 

 into the shallow river — the tide has run out — push the boat out and 

 start for home. 



Thus far we had but slight drizzles. But the clouds now grow 

 heavier, and as we have much farther to row than this morning, 

 due to the low water, we are caught by showers. The last mile or so 

 we have to hurry, see a big rain approaching. My man pushes her 

 with a pole while I row all I can, with both hands, with the heavy 

 oar. Of course the whole population of Kotlik has to see our arrival. 

 And more, too, for in our absence a schooner came in with wood and 

 a number of the natives. They talk, but no one is either angry or 

 excited. We two carry the boxes, pails, etc. — grass covered — into the 

 house; how lucky I am now alone. Inside I remove the wet grass 

 from them — the bones, too, are somewhat wet — then pay my Eskimo 

 $5, which again is taken as a matter-of-fact thing, without thanks, 

 but he well deserved the amount, even if I rowed a full half. 



It is 9 p. m. My man comes again, we have a modest supper, he 

 some left-over meat and I again the smoked fish, which I feel is 

 strengthening me as well as agreeing with my stomach, and then to 



