The St. Johns herald., 1892-10-20
MINES OF MUMMIEs.
Digging Up the Dead Q Regular h.
 dustry in Peru
A Rainless Region Where Flesh Dries Without DeccnpositiOa-Quee Finds Among the ToIn5s CT Elm
 bair1ed Ancienss.

of verdure, modern bTlilt houses clus- tered in rows around rather handsome church, and long mole, the latter piled up with bags, bales and boxes, and crowded with soldiers, merchants and cargadcres. This is Africa. a port of considerable consequence, because being the outlet to Taena and rich mines beyond, and the ''key'' to the still dcbatable territory. Notwith- standing it's mole, writes correspondent of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, steamers must anchor away out in the bay, and passengers be rowed ashore in canoes. However, they no longer have to be carried through the surf on the backs of men, as during the Peruvian regime
 Behind the town a great windrow of yellow sand sweeps back from the Morro, forming kind of amphitheater, unrelieved by tree or shrub or blade of grass This ridge, and all the desert for miles beyond, is vast burial ground, which must once have been of much greater extent, for it is known that during the last hun dred years the ocean has made consid- crablc inroads. A few years ago, when worl1rnen were digging up the sand to fill Arica's pier, and opening a track for the railroad that leads to Tacna (the important city of the district, forty miles inland), they found mummies everywhere; not only humble fisher, men, wrapped in their nets, and lowly tillers of the soil in shrords of braided rushes, but the shriveled bodies of chiefs and other personages of conse- quence, enveloped in fine cloth and thin layers of beaten gold. These aristocrats of bygone age farcd worse than their brother plebeians-fcr, while the latter were left comparativel; Jndistur5ed, los Ricos, now grim and ghastly as the poorest, were stripped by rude hands and their crumbling bones tossel, un- covered, by the wayside. Our party went mummy hunting on horseback, striking straight across the desert to point about five miles south of Africa. We were accompanied by several peones Qaborers) and suitable escort; for it is considered unsafe for strangers to go out unattended, as highwaymen arc abroad in the land and the peones might be tempted to make new mummies if anything of value were unearthed. However, people bent on such blood curdiing errands as disturbing the dead are not likely to hunt alone, but natu- rally prefer company to keep their spir- its up.
 Dig anywhere and you cannot go amiss of grave. The spades of other inquisitive persons have scratched the desert here and there, but the great bulk of it is entirely undisturbed except by fitful winds that whirl the sand into crescent-shaped mounds; and doubtless it will remain so until, in the lapse of ages, the slowly-encroaching Pacific shall swallow it all. Nothing can decay protected by the magnetic dust of this rainless region, and the contents of the tombs look as if they were put there yesterday. There is no consuming worm or insect. Flesh dries without decomposition; wood and vegetable matter petriiy from the absence of moisture, while fabrics and articles in stone and clay 'lceep" forever.
 Our worlSmen dug in several different places to the depth of five or six feet and brought up a dozen well-conditioned ''ancients"-two of which I have shipped to the United States with their wrappings intact. The most curious things we found that day were not the rings of beaten gold or silver cncircling bony fingers, nor clay water-jars mold ed in quaint designs, nor bone spindles. with thread still in them. just as the weaver laid down his work some cen turies ago, but the petrifed eyeballs, which careful digger may always find, seldom inserted in the face of the mummy, but fallen out among the wrappings. Modern science cannot comprehend how these eyes were pre- served; the commonly accepted theory is that they were never the visual or gans of human beings, but those of cut tlefish, with which the more perishable optics of the subjects to be mummified were replaced. But they are not less curious, and are really beautiful things fiat on one side, round and smooth on the other, amber-lil1e yellow in color, holding light as an opal, and varying in size from the tip of your smallest finger NO SAAS SAAa VI et 1uSN are eagerly sought for the settings of pins, sleeve-buttons, etc, and are durable as most jewels.
 The early Peruvians preserved their dead something after the manner of the Egyptians, except that the mummies of Peru are always in a sitting posture, with knees drawn up to the chin and hands clasped in front of the knees. The head and all is first enveloped in dyed cotton cloth, bound with ropes of braided llama wool (similar to the ropes made to-day by Andean Indians); the whole uncanny bundle inclosed within another netting of ropes, or basket like case of braided rushes. Remove the cloth and the hair, always long, black and glossy, will be found elabo- rately braided, perhaps gold or silver earrings in the ears, and a necklace of the same metal depending upon the breast. The features are we'll preserved, even to their expression, which is usual lv one of extreme terror and mental