THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
71 
Mound Builders. 
It is generally believed that the Mississippi 
Valley and the Atlantic coast were once populated 
by an agricultural and partially civilized race quite 
different from the nomadic Indians, though possi- 
bly the progenitors of some of the Indian tribes, 
and that, after centuries of occupation, they disap- 
peared, at least a thousand, and perhaps many 
thousand years before the advent of Europeans. 
The theory has been advanced that these people 
migrated from Asia, and that they passed over Asia 
to Siberia, across Behring Straits, down the Pacific 
Coast of America from Alaska and to the Mississip- 
pi Valley, and down to Mexico, Central America 
and Peru. The remains of the Mound-Builders, as 
this vanished people are called, are scattered over 
most of the states of the central and lower Missis- 
sippi Valley, along the banks of the Missouri and 
on the sources of the Allegheny. They are most 
numerous in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, 
Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missis- 
sippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and are 
found in the western part of New York and in 
Michigan and Iowa. These mounds vary greatly 
in size; in some instances are very extensive and 
exceedingly intricate, notably those of the Licking 
Valley near Newark, Ohio, which cover an area of 
two square miles. In other localities there are some 
which reach a height of ninety feet. It is not be- 
lieved that these people had any written language, 
as no inscriptions or tablets yet discovered indicate 
this. Many of these mounds have been found to 
contain skeletons, numerous implements and orna- 
ments, usually composed of stone, sometimes of 
copper; also rude and coarse pottery of curious de- 
sign. In substantiation of the belief that these 
people came from Asia is the fact that in Siberia 
mounds have been found similar to those in the 
Mississippi Valley. 
The Schneider System of Cremation. 
The system of cremation used in the new crema- 
tion urn at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, San Francisco, 
is that invented by Richard Schneider, an engineer 
who lives in Dresden, Saxony, says the San Fran- 
cisco Examiner. It is the same introduced within 
the last year at Hamburg, and is probably the best 
process yet known. Under the Schneider system 
fuel is put into a gas regenerator and lighted, and 
when the gas is formed it is mixed with air. Dur- 
ing the process of combustion the flame heats the 
fire-bricks which wall the incineration chamber, and 
the products of combustion after passing through 
the chamber and a fire-clay grating are carried off 
through a flue. After the fire has been burning for 
some hours the regenerator becomes bright red and 
the incineration chamber shows a white heat. Then 
the operation of reducing the human body to ashes 
may be commenced. The body is placed in 
a marble sarcophogus, which stands in a niche at 
the right of the main auditorium of the crematory. 
A button being pressed, the body is lowered by 
machinery into the preparation room, where it is 
stripped and wrapped in a sheet soaked in alum wa- 
ter. It is placed in an iron receptacle whose bottom 
is covered with a solution of alum and water. The 
door of the incineration chamber is then swung open 
and the body is given to the consuming heat. 
Through an opening in a door of the chamber the 
official in charge of the operation closely observes 
the progress of the incineration, and when it is con- 
cluded he reverses the gas and air valves and the 
ashes fall into the ashpit of the crematorium. No 
fire is visible. A rosy light, the product of more 
than 2,000 degrees of heat, plays around the shroud- 
ed form. No sight could be more impressive, few 
more beautiful. 
The new marble columbarium of the United 
States Cremation Company at Fresh Pond, Long 
Island, was dedicated last month with appropriate 
ceremonies. The building contains niches for 600 
urns. In his address. President Lange traced the 
progress of cremation and among other evidences of 
its growth in this country said that with the single 
exception of Japan, more bodies are incinerated 
yearly in the United States than in any other 
country, and the custom is constantly increasing. 
Some of the statistics are of interest. Of the one 
thousand and ten bodies cremated at Fresh Pond to 
date, six hundred and fifty were men, two hundred 
and seventy were women and eighty-eight children. 
Six hundred and seventy-five of the incinerants 
were foreign born, and of this number five hundred 
and ten were Germans. In Paris the number of 
incinerations ordered by families last year aggre- 
gated I 59, while in New York they amounted to 200. 
The current number of The Urn contains a 
most forcible argument in favor of cremation. It is 
in the form of an illustrated report of the commis- 
sion on Sanitation of Cemeteries at Paris, and pre- 
sents views of seven coffins and their contents in 
various stages of decomposition as exhumed from 
the cemetery of Saint Nazaire, Paris. The bodies 
were exhumed from five months to five years and 
present an appearance most repulsive, while the 
condition in which they are reported to have been 
found is painful to contemplate. 
The practice of cremation in Japan appears to have 
been in vogue from the most ancient times, the in- 
vestigations of archaeologists having established the 
fact that it was practiced by prehistoric races. 
