SCHUMACHER ON KJOKKENMODDINGS OF CALIFORNIA. 47 



about tbe Chinese Harbor. The mode of burial on this island is differ- 

 ent from that on islands previously investigated. The bodies rest in 

 separate graves, which we found were not marked by whale-bones, 

 stones, or other material elsewhere usually employed, and lie on their 

 backs, the feet drawn up, the arms folded over the chest, and the head 

 either resting on the occiput or on the side or sunkto the breast. The 

 skeletons, as a rule, were facing the east, although other directions were 

 observed. Many of the bodies show signs of having been buried in 

 matting coated with asphaltum.* Most of the skeletons and implements 

 are laid bare by the winds, and those are often much worn by the 

 grinding action of the sand. In a mound one mile northward of the 

 sand-flat, at the southeast end, we found the whale-bones apparently in- 

 dicating the last resting-place of those that accumulated the kitchen- 

 stuff, but by digging into it found the ribs of whales to be the remains 

 of houses rather than the marks of graves, planted in a circle, and their 

 natural curve so adjusted as to form the frame of a hut in shape not un- 

 like a bee-hive, which was in some instances quite well preserved. . 



Our modus opercmdi was here changed ; spade and pick were dis- 

 pensed with, and our party went over the shell-mounds and carried the 

 relics to heaps, which afterward were conveyed by horses procured from 

 the superintendent to our boat in the small cove, and thence taken by 

 water to our camp for a careful packing. On this island two mortars 

 were found, with the ornaments in high relief, the largest and best made 

 pestles and sculptures in serpentine, representing sea-lions, fishes, and 

 birds, and other objects, showing a superiority in the manufacture of 

 stone implements over the inhabitants of the two islands before men- 

 tioned. Eemains of fish-hooks were found plentiful, but, weathered out 

 as they were, could not be saved. Together with the above-mentioned 

 sculptures, several specimens of a hook-like implement were collected, 

 made of serpentine; also a tube and pestle of the same material, the 

 use of which I was unable to trace. The money deposits of shells and 

 stone on this island are very remarkable. They were found before only 

 in graves, buried with their former owner, but here we found in some 

 places on the shell-mounds, apart from the skeletons, numerous small 

 heaps of the shell Olivella hiplicata, and some of the land-shell Helix 

 strigosa ; also pebbles of uniform size, about as large as a pigeon's eggj 

 apparently coated with asphaltum, or burnt and blackened by fire ; they 

 averaged in quantity from a half to one cubic foot, and were evidently 

 stored there and afterward exposed to the drifts of sand, forming con- 

 spicuous diminutive hillocks. We found as many as sixty of these 

 deposits on one shell-mound. This, with the position of some of the 

 implements we observed, seems to point to the fact that the last inhab- 

 itants left or were taken oft" suddenly. We found, for instance, instead 



* Asphaltum is plentiful ou all the islauds, washed ashore among the rocks. A sab- 

 marine spring of it exists in the channel between Prisoner Harbor and Santa Barbara, 

 and at several places along the adjoining mainland. 



