l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



Kilometer 98. — After passing Huaral, the railroad line soon enters 

 again the desert depressions and hills, which extend to the val- 

 ley of Huacho. In constructing the line over a barren elevated 

 flat facing the sea, 98 kilometers from Ancon, the workmen struck 

 an old graveyard, which they promptly set to excavate, and which 

 yielded quantities of pottery with many human bones. Due to 

 the kindness of Mr. Otto Holstein, the chief of traffic of the rail- 

 road, the writer and his companion for the time being, Dr. Tello, 

 were " dropped " off at this hot and desolate place one Saturday 

 noon, and stayed there until the afternoon of the following day. 

 The place was found littered with pottery as well as human bones 

 (pi. 7). Probably more than 200 burials had been excavated. 

 There were no ruins nor any signs of habitation in the neighbor- 

 hood, with the exception of three or four mealing stones among 

 the sands a little to the south and some shell accumulations ; nor 

 were there any ruins within a considerable distance in any direction. 

 The place was evidently a settlement of fishermen, and was occupied 

 only during certain portions of the year. The cemetery, which is not 

 completely exhausted, was very rich in pottery, from two to as mam- 

 as ten or more vessels being found with each body, as we learned 

 later on. The earthenware represented in the main kitchen utensils 

 and tall water jars, but there were also other types. It was well 

 made and in numerous instances quite artistic in shape or decora- 

 tion, though scarcely comparable with the better class of Peruvian 

 pottery. 



The vandalism in this place was appalling. Hundreds of vessels 

 which could not readily be sold or transported, lay broken and even 

 entire over the surface, and skulls and bones, in many instances 

 damaged by the diggers, lay in every direction. A busy afternoon 

 was spent in examining the remains and selecting what was worth 

 saving; a cache was made of the entire or better preserved pieces 

 of pottery (pi. 8, fig. 2), and a valuable selection of skulls and bones 

 were packed in sacks and eventually brought to Lima. 



That night we were to be taken away by a " train," but the train 

 proved to be only a machine and this passed serenely by leaving us 

 where we were. We, therefore, slept on the sands. The next morn- 

 ing, Sunday, our first occupation was a dangerous descent down a 

 steep slope to the sea, more than 200 feet below, for a bath. When 

 we returned an hour later, we found to our astonishment five men 

 busily engaged in digging in the graves (pi. 8, fig. 1), and at the 

 same time saw a railroad hand car on which they came. They 



