Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/691

 624 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

In plate XXIX, a, is presented a view of the skull as it ap- peared when first brought to the attention of Professor Whitney in 1866, and in plate XXIX, b, as it appeared after having been cleaned up by Dr Wyman at Cambridge. The former is from a photograph made by Alonzo Rhodes, at Murphy's, California. Being faded, the photograph had to be redrawn for engraving, hence the cut has not the merits of a photograph directly repro- duced. The latter is copied from a lithographic plate published by Whitney in his work on the Auriferous Gravels and is mani- festly defective, quite a little of the character and natural rugged- ness having been lost by the draughtsman. The specimen is now preserved in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, and com- prises about three-fourths of the skull. Enough remains, how- ever, to enable the craniologist to determine something of the physical characteristics and hence of the mental equipment of the person to whom it belonged. The account of the skull given by Whitney includes a careful description by Jeffries Wyman, one of the highest American authorities of the time. The whole subject is presented in such manner as to convey to the unprejudiced mind an impression that the skull is a genuine and well authenticated relic of antiquity.

The skull is said to have been taken from the Mattison & Company mine on the gentle slope of an oblong rounded hill, some three hundred feet in height, situated in the suburbs of Altaville, a mile or more northwest from the important mining town of Angels. This shaft is still open, a roomy rectangular well some one hundred and thirty feet deep, cut in beds of com- pact, tenacious, volcanic rock and underlying strata of varying character, and has undergone little change in the thirty-three years that have passed since the reported finding of the skull. A road once passed the mine and continued round the hill, but it is now nearly obliterated, and all traces of buildings are gone from the slope which is diversified only by occasional old mine dumps and a growth of scrubby trees. It was my intention to descend into

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