VILLAGES OF THE DEAD
not being aware of the fact that he understood their language.
On my way down to the shore I crossed an other of the village cemeteries in a very rough and steep slope of weathered granite, several hundred feet above the village and to the westward of it. Whole skeletons or single bones and skulls lay here and there, wedged into chance positions among the stones, weathering and falling to pieces like the ivory-pointed spears, arrows, etc., mixed with them. The mountain that they were lying on is crumbling also—dust to dust. Some of the corpses have had stones piled on them, and their goods on top of all; others were laid on the rough rocks with a row of big stones on the lower side to keep them from rolling down.
The damp, lower portion of the wild north wind, as it was deflected up and over the slopes and frosty summit of the peninsula, has given birth to a remarkably beautiful covering of white ice crystals on the windward sides of exposed boulders, and in some places on the snow. The crystals resemble white feathers in their aggregate forms, but are firm and icy in structure, and as evenly and gracefully imbricated on each other over the rough faces of the rocks as are the feathers on the breast of a bird. The effect is marvelously beautiful and
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