a) lal 
678 ; 
up the crevices in the body of the rock. The 
plateau is not very wide before the foot of the 
high rolling hills is gained. In fig. 1 the con- 
stant barricades of driftwood, met everywhere 
on the many islands of these rivers, are shown, 
and are much below the average in amount ; 
the heads of the islands being often piled up 
with stacks ten to twenty feet high, forming 
more or less a protecting dam, in freshets, 
from the eroding power of the swift water. 
An Ayan (or Iyan) Indian grave some two 
or three months old, on the bank of the river 
SCIENCE. 
[Von. III, No. 70. 
From the grave itself there is erected a light 
pole tw enty to twenty-five feet high, and hae 
ing some colored cloth flaunting from its top ; 
although in this identical grave the cloth was 
white, or, rather, dirty white. Not far away, 
always close enough to show that it is some 
superstitious adjunct of the grave, is another 
pole of about equal height ; and to its top there 
is fastened a poorly carved figure of a fish, 
duck, goose, or bear, which, I think, desig- 
nates the sub-clan to which the departed be- 
longed. This pole may be, and often is, a fine 
Fie. 2.— VIEW LOOKING UP THE YUKON FROM THE MOUTH OF THE PELLY. 
near the site of old Fort Selkirk, was a typical 
one of the many we saw from here to Fort 
Yukon. The body is bent up, with the knees 
to the breast, so as to take as little space as 
possible, and enclosed in a very rough box of 
hewn boards two and three inches thick, cut 
out with their hand-axes, and then buried in 
the ground, the lid seldom being over a foot or 
a foot and a half below the surface. The grave- 
enclosure is made of roughly hewn boards, four 
corner-posts being prolonged, and rather neatly 
rounded into a design represented in fig. 3, 
and from which they seldom depart. Tt is 
lashed at the top by willow withes, and one or 
two stripings of red paint are just below this. 
young tree of proper height and convenient 
situation, stripped of its limbs and bark. The 
‘totem’ at the top is sometimes made as a 
weather-vane, or probably it is easier to secure 
firmly by a pin driven vertically; and it be- 
comes a sepulchral anemoscope without their 
intending it for any such meteorological object. 
These poles may be striped with red paint, and 
the outside pole has one or several pieces of 
cloth hung from its length. The graves are 
always near the river-bank, and, when fresh 
and white, can be seen for many miles. There — 
is no tendency whatever to group them into 
graveyards, bey ond the fact that they are a little 
more numerous near their semi-permanent vil-— 
a 
f 
