84 



titions of wood, stone, or matting, into small rooms like the state-rooms of a 

 steamer, but without doors ; open toward tlie center of the yourt, and each 

 accommodating one family. Sometimes the dead were inclosed in the 

 apartment they had occupied when living, which was filled with earth and 

 walled up, while the other inhabitants retained their apartments as before. 

 We found, in the course of our excavations on Ulakhta Spit in one of these 

 old youi-ts, three skeletons thus interred. The bodies were tied with the 

 knees brought up to the chin, as is now customary among the continental 

 Innuit. 



The building of houses and lighting them with lamps must have exer- 

 cised a powerful modifying influence on these people. Eising and retiring 

 with the sun, their progenitors relied on heaven for their light and warmth. 

 Now the lamp formed at once a center of attraction for the members of a 

 household, prolonged their available hours of labor, and cheered the dreary 

 nights of winter. Not only would the utilitarian side of the native mind 

 become developed, but it might begin dimly to experience sensations of the 

 beautiful. Probably the greater comfort and mutual confidence in which 

 they existed would tend to modify for the better the dreary animism which 

 characterizes all of the most degraded and savage races. 



This brings us to the consideration of those objects found in the shell- 

 heaps, and solely confined to the uppermost strata, which may be fairly 

 denominated — 



ARTICLES OF ART OR ORNAMENT. 



The expression of aesthetic feeling, as indicated by attempts at orna- 

 mentation of utensils or weapons, or by the fabrication of articles which 

 serve only for purposes of adornment, is remarkably absent in the contents 

 of the shell-heaps. As a whole, this feeling became developed only at the 

 period directly anterior to the historic epoch. It was doubtless exhibited 

 in numerous ways, of which no preservation was possible, so that the early 

 record, even for a considerable period, would be very incomplete. We 

 know that great taste and delicate handiwork were expended on articles of 

 clothing and manufactures of grass fiber, wliich would be entirely destroyed 

 in the shell-heaps, and of Avhich only fragmentary remains have been 

 preserved on the mummies found in the latest prehistoric burial-caves and 



