Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/185

Rh living on raw fish and birds. But in after years the great cave became the burial ground of Kiooste.

We were now obliged to return to Masset for provisions. Leaving Masset at half past ten in the morning, we entered the harbor of Old Tongas at half past nine the same night, having made eighty miles in eleven hours.

We were now in the country of the Tlingits, and before us was Old Tongas—old because it was long since abandoned, and its inhabitants had formed another or New Tongas. Tongas is the southernmost of a chain of Tlingit villages which extends as far north as the Aleutian Islands. Like the Haidas, the Tlingits are slowly but surely disappearing, and the time must soon come when the race will be entirely extinct.

There is but little of interest to-day in Old Tongas except the totem poles and the old ruined houses. Totems with the Tlingits play the same important part in their civil and religious life that they do among the Haidas. Even the corner posts of their houses are carved into totemic designs. Comparing their totem poles and memorial columns with those which we saw in the Haida villages, it becomes apparent at once that the symbols are more boldly executed and the conventionalism less pronounced. The figures are not blended and combined as they are among the Haidas. We noticed also that the human figure is repeated over and over again, and is always portrayed with a boldness and fidelity that are worthy of the highest praise.

One of the unique features of Old Tongas, and one we saw nowhere else, was the ruin of a house which still retained its old front porch made up of heavy logs; while in front, leading up to the porch, was a pair of primitive steps hewn out of a solid log. In another place, almost entirely obscured by vegetation, we came upon a recent house grave surmounted by a cross, showing that the influence of missionaries had been felt here before the town was deserted.

At ten o'clock we started toward the east again. We had been disappointed in not finding the grave of a Shaman or medicine man. It is no easy matter to secure osteological material from the Tlingits, for until within a very few years the dead were cremated. This rule, however, did not apply to the Shamans, for it was believed that their bodies would not burn, and consequently they were placed in little house graves usually erected upon-some lonely rock or picturesque promontory. We had been slowly working away at the oars, for the wind had completely died away, and were rounding a point on Duke Island, when we espied one of these little houses perched far up on a rocky point which was piled high with innumerable drift. We were soon ashore with the camera and found