Lonely Mounds At Point Barrow

Point Barrow, Alnska, the northernmosl point of land of the North American sontinent, has sorue interesting graveyards of its own. A bout 11 years ago Lieuteuant Ray, in his report of the polar eïpedition to Point Barrow, cecorded tliat in digging a shaft 26 feet below the earth's surfaee to obtain earth temperatnres he found a pair of wooden goggles, pointing to the great lapse of tirue since these shores were first peopled. The Alaska Miuing Record says that this country was undoubtedly inhabited long before Columbus discovered America. Of the origin or descent of the inhabitants no defmite trace has been found, and there are no records of the past among the people who now live there. Their language abounds in legends, bnt none gives any data by which to judge how long these desolate shores have been inhabited. The ruins of ancient villages and ■winter huts along the seashore and in the interior show that tho country has been inhabited for centuries. There are mounds at Point Barrow marking the site of three huts dating back to Lhe time when the natives had no iron and the men "talked like dog." These mounds stand in the middle of a marsh, and the sinking of the land caused the site to be flooded and abandoned. The inhabitants in times past have followed tne receding line of ice which at one time capped the northern part of this continent and have moved along the easiest line of travel. This is shovrn in the general distribution of a similiar people, speaking a similar tongue, from Greenland to Bering strait. The distribution of the race today marks the routes traveled. The seashore led them along the coasjts of Labrador and Greenland, Hudson bay and its tributary waters. They came down the Yukon, so rich in minerals, to people the shores of that stream and the interior of Alaska, and traveled along the coast to Cape Prince of Wales. To this day they use dogs instead of deer, the natives of North America having 'never domesticated the rein deer, and they speak a different tongue from their neighbors across the strait in Siberia. Some writers on the subject have advanced the theory that the natives oi Alaska are descendants of the race of people that Cortes drove out of Mexico, others that they are Japanese or Chinese in origin, and others still that they came to this country across the strait from Siberia. So far as defmite information is concerned, one guess is as good as another. The lonely mounds at Point Barrow mark the antiqnity of the race, but they do not teil its story.