54 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



in width, are covered witli glittering shells, bones, great masses of flints, 

 and hundreds of tons of broken rocks and cobble-stones. Stratified 

 rocks on the shore reach out to sea, and must have been formerly, as 

 they are now, rich in shells, the adjoining waters teeming with fish, of 

 which the masses of kitchen-refuse offer convincing proof. The dunes 

 toward the south are high, and partially covered with a luxuriant 

 growth of chaparral and chemisal, the sheltered home of timid rabbits, 

 quails, and other game. Water is especially plentiful in a stream south 

 of the settlement, and of a better quality than in the gulch right north 

 of it. 



Early the next morning I went over the ground, studying the location 

 of the settlement, the i;ature of the soil, and such signs as would guide 

 me in the discovery of the graves ; and, as their marks were still visible 

 above the ground, I had no difficulty in finding a large cemetery close 

 to the beach, which forms here a perpendicular bluff of 50 feet in height. 

 In size, but certainly not in the yield of implements, this grave-yard could 

 be favorably compared with the one on the mesa at Dos Pueblos, which 

 returned about fifty boxes of relics, while here hardly four were filled- 

 The large spear-points of chalcedony, one measuring 10^ inches, of 

 which eight were exhumed, were exceptionally valuable. The surface 

 of the grave-yard, under which we found buried at a depth of 5 feet in 

 the average nearly 400 skeletons, measured 600 square feet. If we now 

 take on an average three skeletons one above another, we find that the 

 surface space required for these three bodies was 4^ square feet, or 3 

 by IJ feet, which would be the most convenient proportion to fit the 

 doubled-up corpse of an aboriginal burial. 



While in camp at Osbi, we encountered a heavy winter rain-storm 

 accompanied by snow and hail, from which we had much to suffer un- 

 der our light shelter, and which deprived us even of our camp-fire. 



On the 25th of January, we started out to San Antonio rancho, where 

 a cemetery was reported, which we found to be situated opposite the 

 house of the stock-raiser Olivera (Map 14) [Plate 20]. This place we 

 found nearly all dug up by the Spaniards for the sake of obtaining some 

 ollas and mortars, which are a great addition to their meager household 

 utensils in such an out-of-the-way place. The result of our labors here 

 was very poor. Much disappointed, but with hopes of a change for the 

 better, we went along on our difficult trip toward the mouth of San An- 

 tonio Creek, over a country which was hardly ever traversed by a wagon, 

 and, properly, should be reserved only for the roaming vaquero. About 

 four miles from the mouth of the San Antonio and a mile from its right 

 bank is Burton's place, an old, dilapidated, deserted adobe house, and 

 back of it a small pond, near which a cemetery was reported. The house, 

 the lagoon, and even some signs of former Indian huts, were readily 

 found; but, with all the pains we had taken, the burial-place could not 

 be discovered, and yet its location is clearly pointed out by the forma- 

 tion of the surrounding ground to be back of the pond. Likely, the 



