THE GRAVE OF THE SILENT HUNTER. 207 
“These flat rocks seem to be. regular—this must be the 
sepulchre, coffin, or whatever you choose to call it !’—he con- 
tinued, as he scratched away. “By Jove! look through that 
erack—lI can see the skull!” 
I knelt beside him, and sure enough a human skull was 
visible in the shallow sarcophagus. I immediately proposed 
to remove the stone, and take the-skull out. I was at the 
time a vehemently ardent student of the new science of Gall 
and Spurzehim, and would cheerfully have risked my life for 
any such opportunity as this for examining the skull of a man 
whose character must evidently have been so very marked and 
extraordinary. It was no vulgar curiosity that caused me to 
disregard the slight remonstrance of Charlie, who muttered 
something about the pity to disturb the old fellow’s rest. I 
reverently lifted the thin flat stone, about eighteen inches in 
length by six in breadth, which lay across the grave over the 
head, and could then see the structure of the whole as well as 
the great portion of the skeleton. 
The grave was only about eighteen inches deep by about the 
same width, and was lined bottom and sides with flat unhewn 
stones of the same size of that I had taken from over the head, 
and the rest of the cover was the same, as well as what we 
call the head-stone, which stood an inch and a half above the 
surface. I immediately recognized the sort of stone sarco- 
phagus or grave, which is to be found in thousands, covering 
sometimes miles of ground in the southern part of Kentucky 
and portions of Tennessee. The people adopting this curious 
mode of sepulture were extinct at a period earlier than the 
remotest reach of the tradition of the present aboriginal races, 
as we vainly enough call them! I have often examined these 
graves where you could not make a step for miles but upon 
one. It was evidently a pigmy race, for these graves ave- 
rage not more than three feet in length. It was from these 
ancient burial grounds that the old hunter had obtained his 
idea of sepulture. Who this singular people were, wili pro 
