[Footnote: Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., 1877, vol 1, p 62.], is so
remarkable that it seems worthy of admittance to this paper. It
relates probably to the Innuit of Alaska.

"The earliest remains of man found in Alaska up to the time of writing
I refer to this epoch [Echinus layer of Dall]. There are some crania
found by us in the lowermost part of the Amaknak cave and a cranium
obtained at Adakh, near the anchorage in the Bay of Islands. These
were deposited in a remarkable manner, precisely similar to that
adopted by most of the continental Innuit, but equally different from
the modern Aleut fashion. At the Amaknak cave we found what at first
appeared to be a wooden inclosure, but which proved to be made of the
very much decayed supra-maxillary bones of some large cetacean. These
were arranged so as to form a rude rectangular inclosure covered over
with similar pieces of bone. This was somewhat less than 4 feet long,
2 feet wide, and 18 inches deep. The bottom was formed of flat pieces
of stone. Three such were found close together, covered with and
filled by an accumulation of fine vegetable and organic mold. In each
was the remains of a skeleton in the last stages of decay. It had
evidently been tied up in the Innuit fashion to get it into its narrow
house, but all the bones, with the exception of the skull, were
reduced to a soft paste, or even entirely gone. At Adakh a fancy
prompted me to dig into a small knoll near the ancient shell-heap; and
here we found, in a precisely similar sarcophagus, the remains of a
skeleton, of which also only the cranium retained sufficient
consistency to admit of preservation. This inclosure, however, was
filled with a dense peaty mass not reduced to mold, the result of
centuries of sphagnous growth, which had reached a thickness of nearly
2 feet above the remains. When we reflect upon the well-known slowness
of this kind of growth in these northern regions, attested by numerous