286 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



worth or distinction than Wilyum Aitchswird, Si Lusrite, 

 Hammil Tun-Fish, Horay Shoseemer, and the like, peace 

 to their ashes. It is probable the people of Nu-Jerk have 

 been oppressed with taxes to defray the expenses of this 

 survey to an amount exceeding a fiftieth of a mill for 

 every man, woman and child in the province since the 

 survey was inaugurated. This may seem an incredibly 

 onerous burden, but I am in possession of certified docu- 

 ments to bear me out in the statement. 



By the Kewahwenaw method these things are done 

 without inflicting the least financial burdens on the un- 

 taxed poor. In the province of Kewahwenaw little value 

 is placed, save in a surreptitious way, on the circuitous 

 and fanciful processes of science, so-called. A man with 

 a forked stick is better than a geologist with a hammer 

 and pocket lens. He is cheaper ; his method is more 

 direct; he walks immediately to the bed of gum or vein 

 of oil and puts his finger on the spot, and that is the 

 end of it I mean the end of your anxiety. Your fortune 

 is now made, and it costs but seventy-five cents. Such a 

 man can walk over the province and point out all its 

 locations, while the man with a hammer would be crack- 

 ino- out a few fossils. He has another advantao-e; he 

 wears a respectable sj^stem of tattoo, while the man with 

 a hammer may be dressed in a suit of plain black skin. 

 He speaks the language of the people ; he finds coal in 

 "veins," and fixes everything in "ranges;" the man with 

 a hammer talks about chlorastrolites and pol^^glottophyl- 

 lums, and idles away weeks in his roundabout methods, 

 and all this time under pay! 



It will interest posterity to learn what were some of 

 his old methods, now happily superseded in Kewahwenaw. 



