BONE CAVE AT PORT KENNEDY. 



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side of what might be compared to a bottle of unknown size, packed tightly with solid 

 substances (see figs. 1 and 11). We stood, not under a rock arch, but in the open 

 quarry, forty-five feet below the surface of the meadow above, and surrounded by 

 escarpments of ordovician limestone dipping northwest, and where the latter were 

 overlaid by a horizontal stratum of triassic shale. Immediately confronting us rose 



a vertical exposure of 

 clay, stones and bones, 

 twenty-six feet wide 

 and thirteen feet high, 

 enclosed by water- 

 worn cave walls, and 

 pocketed in the rock 

 front of the recently 

 cut lowest bench in 

 the quarry. 



We were to dig 

 into the receptacle 

 (see fig. 1, C. C.) under 

 a formidable mass of 

 rubbish thrown upon 

 it by the quarry men, 

 and by means of steam 

 pumps work down- 

 ward, spite of invad- 

 ing water, into the soft 

 area of our foothold ex- 

 tending about thirty 

 feet behind us. 



From the vertical 



face of the digging, ends of limb bones, large and small, caught the eye, and at all 

 points yellow angular fragments showing osseous fracture, together with the polished 

 sides of tusks, and the enamelled faces of teeth set in jaws, astonished us. 



To rescue these was our aim, while labelling them in India ink on removal, so 

 as to fix their relative position, each as discovered, in a particular whitewashed 

 rectangle, one of a series, one foot deep vertically, extending three feet inward 

 horizontally 1 (save the last series C, which extended six feet inward horizontally), 

 and three feet wide, covering the entire face of the exposure (see fig. 2). Trusting to 

 reach some conclusion as to the age of the remains and their manner of deposition, 

 while inspired with the hope of discovering traces of human presence in the deposit, 

 and so settling there, the question of man's antiquity in Eastern North America 



1 Nine vertical, crossed by thirteen horizontal whitewashed stripes (see fig. 2), continually repainted, 

 chequered the whole exposure with nine vertical rows of rectangles of the size named, numbered as rows in 

 succession from left to right, each row containing thirteen subdivisions, numbered in succession from top to 

 bottom. The inward advance upon the exposure was recorded by regarding any series of rectangles as 



Fro. i 



-PORT KENNEDY IJUNE CAVE. 



1 The contours of the cave walls, extending downward below the foothold for an 

 unknown depth, are seen to the right behind the ladder. The rectangles white- 

 washed on the exposure preparatory to the removal and labelling of specimens. 

 cover the fossil bearing area vertically laid bare. But the ladder standing at the 

 general level of the lowest quarry floor, 45 feet below the top of the limestone 

 escarpment, and on a level with the Schuylkill river (less than half a mile to the 

 northward) rests on fossil-bearing earth filling all the deeper parts of the cave. 



Above the upper whitewashed line and behind the stone wall, a heap of dumped 

 earth (continually falling as the exposure was undermined) extends upward to the 

 cliff's top at an angle of nearly 45 degrees. To the left an inrushing rivulet crosses 

 the foreground from left to right by a ditch close to the exposure. 



