When the Indians were questioned about them [the shell-heaps] they generally answered that they are very old, and are the work of people unknown to them or to their fathers. As an exception to this rule, however, the Californians attributed a large shell heap formed of mussel shells and the bones of animals, on Point St. George, near San Francisco, to the Hohgates, the name they give to seven mythical strangers who arrived in the country from the sea, and who were the first to build and live in houses. The Hohgates killed deer, sea-lions, and seals; they collected the mussels which were very abundant on the neighboring rocks, and the refuse of their meals became piled up about their homes. One day when fishing, they saw a gigantic seal; they managed to drive a harpoon into it, but the wounded animal fled seaward, dragging the boat rapidly with it toward the fathomless abysses of the Charekwin. At the moment when the Hohgates were about to be engulfed in the depths, where those go who are to endure eternal cold, the rope broke the seal disappeared, and the boat was flung up into the air. Since then the Hohgates, changed into brilliant stars, return no more to earth, where the shell heaps remain as witness of their former residence. [37] The word "Hohgates," I believe is but a variation of the word "Hagoth," the name of the man who started these maritime expeditions, and it would be altogether in keeping with Nephite customs [38] for those who sailed away in his vessels to be called "Hagothites" or "Hohgates." The vessel of this tradition may be one of those lost to the Nephites, which finally found its way to the Californian coast where its occupants landed with their ideas of Nephite civilization, and lived as described in the tradition. One is tempted to smile at the childish ending of the tradition; but under it may not one see that it is but the legendary account of the fact that the vessel sailed away from the California shores and was lost, or, at least, was heard of no more by the natives of those shores. VI. _Native American Race Unity._ The subject of American antiquities should not be closed without a brief reference, at least, to the unity of the American race. Barring such migrations of other races to America as may have taken place since the fall of the Nephites at Cumorah, at the close of the fourth century A. D., and such as to a limited extent may have been going on in the extreme north via Behring Strait at an earlier date, the Book of Mormon requires substantial unity of race in the later native American people. That is to say, they ought to be of Israelitish descent, a mixture of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and Judah--but chiefly, if not all, of Hebrew descent; and even the Jaredites were but a more ancient branch of the same stock. [39]