The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-17
MUMMY HUNTING.
AN ABORIGINAL CEMETERY ON
 THE SHORE
Of the Southern Pacific, Where Thou- sands of Mummies May be Had for
 the Digging.

| tho DiBSAhks
 Special Correspondence of the Journal and Courier)
 | San Marcos de Africa, Chili, Sept F. To my mind there is no more interest
 ing region on the western side of the
 continent than this, which by right be-
 longs to Peru, but was seized by Chili
 during the recent war. Besides the ni- trate and guano fields, Iquiqui, Tarapa-
 ca, Atacama and other places familiar
 to the world, it includes the important city of Tacna, forty miles inland, and
 Africa, its seaport. Approached by 1 steamer, the most conspicuous feature
 of the shore is an enormous promontory
 just south of Africa, called the Moro, | which rises almost perpendicularly out
 of the Pacific to a height of twelve
 hundred feet, and then slopes off at a
 steep grade to the sandy plain behind it. l To the north of the Morro is low line | of verdure, a cluster of modern built ! houses, a rather handsome church, and | long nlole-the latter piled high with
 bags, bales and boxes, and crowded | with merchants, cargadores, soldiers
 and civilians. This is Africa, the fa-
 nous port; but in spite of it's mole, steamers must cast anchor away out in
 the bay and passengers be rowed ashore
 in canoes, However, they no longer I have to be carried through the surf on
 the macks of cargadores, as of yore, but
 now chamber up the slippery stairs of the pier. Africa has quite changed her
 complexion since the war, which made her Chilian instead of a Peruvian city.
 That which attracted us to the place
 has nothing to do with the fitful gov
 ernments of this burlesque republic, and
 has remained unchanged through the wars of many centuries. Behind the town, sweeping back from the Moro, is a great window of yellow sand, which forms a kind of amphitheater unre- lieyed by tree or shrub or blade of grass. All this barren ridge, and the desert for miles around it, is one vast cemetery of the ancient inhabitants, crowded with the dried-up bodies of those who once fished from their balsas in the bay, or cultivated the narrow valley on whose
 seaward <. border they were buried. When workmen were digging up the sand to fill Arica's pier, and were open ing a track for the railway that leads to Taena, they found mummies every where-not only humble fishermen wrapped in their nets, and tillers of the
 soil in shrouds of braided rushes, but
 now and then the body of chief of
 other great parsonage, enveloped in a thin layer of beaten gold. These fared
 worse than the humber cadavers, for while the latter were left comparatively
 undisturbed, los ricos-now grim and
 ghastly as the poorest-were stripped
 by rude hands of everything valuable,
 and their crumbling bones tossed, un-
 covered by the wayside.
 It seems a strange thing to deliberate, ly set out on a grave-robbing expedi- tion; but in this part of the world it is fashionable to go mummy hunting, and to search the aboriginal cemeteries for the curious articles they may contain, besides dead Indians. The Africa bury. ing ground must have been of enormous extent, for though a large portion of it has been washed away by the restless sea during the last century or two, many miles of it yet remains The spades of inquisitive people have dug up considerable area, in places here and there; yet the great bulk of it is entire- ly undisturbed, and will doubtless re- main so until in the lapse of ages, the slowly encroaching Pacific shall swal- low it all @ @
 H--E Es.l l. -r
 We went out on horse back, about five miles from Africa, accompanied by the American consul, who sent some peons ahead with shovels. It is not quite safe for two or three persons to go b themselves, for highwaymen are abroad in the land, and even the workmen might be tempted to mischief if any thing valuable were unearthed. How ever, people bent on such gruesome er- rands as disturbing the dead, are not likely to hunt alone, but prefer plenty of company to keep their spirits up.
 Arrived at the desert, you may dig anywhere without going amiss of grave. In this rainless region, protect ed by the magnetic sand, nothing can decay and the contents of the tombs look as if they were put there yester- day, instead of hundreds of years ago. Flesh dries without decomposition, wood and vegetable matter petrifies, while fabrics and articles of stone and clay will keep for ever. The early Peruvians preserved their dead some- thing after the manner oh~the Egyp- tians, except that these are always in a sitting posture, knees drawn up to the chin, and hands clasped about the knees; head and all enveloped first in dyed cotton cloth, bound around with braided ropes of llama wool,-much like the ropes made by the Andean Indians to-day-the whole uncanny bundle en- closed within another netting of ropes, or sometimes in a basket-like case of braided rushes. Remove the cloth, and the features are found we'll preserved, even to their expression, which is usu- ally that of extreme terror and agony, confirming the assertion of historians that those about to die were placed in what was considered the proper posi- tion for rnunamifying and firmly bound with ropes before breath had left the