Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/182

168 The totem pole stands immediately in front of the dwelling, and in its more ancient form was even an intrinsic part of the house, for an oval opening at the base of the pole served as the entrance.

In addition to the totem poles there was erected in former times an additional pole at one side, near the front of the house, which answered the purpose of a mortuary or memorial column. This pole is usually quite plain, and is surmounted by the crest of the man in whose honor it was erected. Several of these are still standing at Masset, one of the best preserved being the bear column in front of old Chief Edenshaw's house. Farther down the beach we came to another pole which was surmounted by a conical structure which bears a close resemblance to a Haida hat, and, in fact, they relate in Masset that it actually is intended to represent a hat. This pole is not duplicated elsewhere on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Of the ancient burial columns but two remain standing, the others having been pulled down and the dead buried in the little modern cemetery. The first column is single and stands near the water's edge. On the side facing the village and near to the top a rectangular cavity had been chiseled out within which was placed the box containing the body. The other burial structure is in the form of a double column or two posts, whose tops are united by a hollow, boxlike crossbar. In such burial columns as this were usually placed two or more bodies, and in some even entire families.

More photographs, purchases of relics, and measurements of heads, and we were ready to leave this half-modern, half-barbarian, half-dead, half-alive village, for others which knew neither teacher nor preacher, but which were long since abandoned and given over to solitude, to moss, and cedar trees, to snails and hoarse-throated ravens.

Skirting along the western half of the northern shore of Graham Island, we made our first stop at Yan, about three miles from Masset. Here, as elsewhere, we encountered a luxuriant vegetation which covers every inch of the soil, and even mounts to the top of the burial columns and to the decaying rafters and beams of the great old houses. Probably the most interesting object we saw at Yan was a mortuary column, the crossbar or the coffin-box support of which was of a single board, and most handsomely carved in totemic designs. After pushing and crawling for an hour through wet underbrush, made up largely of salmon and rose bushes over three inches in diameter and from fifteen to twenty feet high, we were off again, and that night, with the friendly assistance of a favorable tide, we dropped down into Virago Sound and anchored in front of the old moss-covered village of Kung. This was one of the best of the old villages along this coast, but is now completely