Naturally, whales lie outside the ordinary range of Seri game, yet they are not without place in the tribal economy. During the visit to the Seri rancheria near Costa Rica in 1894, it was noted that various events—births, deaths, journeys, etc.—were referred to “The Time of the Big Fish”; and it was estimated from apparent ages of children and the like that this chronologic datum might be correlated roughly with the year 1887. The era-marking event was memorable to Mashém, to the elderwomen of the Turtle clan, and to other mature members of the group, because they had been enabled thereby to dispense with hunting and fishing for an agreeably long time, and because they had moved their houses; but the providential occurrence was not interpreted at the time. On visiting Isla Tiburon in 1895, the interpretation became clear; along the western shore of Rada Ballena, near the first sand-spit north of the bight, lay the larger bones of a whale, estimated from the length of the mandibles and the dimensions of the vertebræ to have been 75 or 80 feet long. It was evident that the animal had gone into the shoal water at exceptionally high tide and had stranded during the ebb; while the condition of the bones suggested an exposure to the weather of perhaps half a dozen years. On the shrubby bank above the beach, hard by the bleaching skeleton, stood the new rancheria, the most extensive seen in Seriland, comprising some fifteen or twenty habitable jacales; and fragments of ribs and other huge bones about and within the huts[273] attested transportation thither after the building, while the shallowness of the trails and the limited trampling of the fog shrubbery gave an air of freshness to the site and surroundings. The traditions and the relics together made it manifest that “The Time of the Big Fish” had indeed marked an epoch in Seri life; that when the leviathan landed (whether through accident or partly through efforts of balsa-men) it was quickly recognized as a vast contribution to the Seri larder; and that some of the clans, if not the entire tribe, gathered to gorge first flesh and blubber, next sun-softened cartilage and chitin, and then epiphyses and the fatter bones. Some of the ribs were splintered and crushed, evidently by blows of the hupf, in order to give access to the cancellate interiors; several of the vertebræ were battered and split, and nearly all of the bones bore marks of hupf blows, aimed to loosen cartilaginous attachments, start epiphyses, or remove spongy and greasy processes. Little trace of fire was found; in one case a mandible was partly scorched, though the burning appeared to be fortuitous and long subsequent to the removal of the flesh; and a bit of charred and gnawed epiphysis, much resembling the fragments of half-cooked turtle plastron scattered over Seriland, was picked up in one of the huts. The condition of the remains and the various indications connected