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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a thin uniform sheet over the bottom, and 

 rotated the pestle with the utmost force he 

 could command. Two or three decigrammes of 

 chloroaurate of sodium left TS milligramme 

 of metallic gold. Under the action of the 

 pestle the yellow color of the salt gradually 

 deepened to an olive shade. When water 

 was poured on, the undecomposed salt dis- 

 solved, leaving the gold as a delicate purple 

 powder. Half an hour's trituration of half a 

 gramme of the salt resulted in the reduction 

 of 9"2 milligrammes of gold. By a similar op- 

 eration corrosive sublimate was reduced to 

 metallic calomel. Salts of mercury, platinum, 

 and silver gave results analogous to those 

 obtained with gold. 



Value of Tradition. When Jacques Car- 

 tier visited the St. Lawrence River in 1535 he 

 found, where Montreal now is, a strong city 

 exercising an extensive sway, named Hoche- 

 laga. When Champlain sailed up the same 

 river, seventy years later, Hochelaga had dis- 

 appeared and left no trace. The story of 

 the fall of its dominion has never been satis- 

 factorily explained. Mr. Horatio Hale, visit- 

 ing the Wyandotte Indians a few years ago, 

 found among them coherent traditions of 

 their former residence in the east, and their 

 withdrawal thence to settle near Mackinaw. 

 The interpretation of these traditions, of 

 which the author gives two versions, divested 

 of what is fanciful in them, combined with a 

 few known incidents, points to the expulsion 

 of the Huron tribes from their stronghold of 

 Hochelaga as the result of a war with other 

 tribes of the Iroquois stock. From this les- 

 son Mr. Hale draws important conclusions 

 regarding the value of traditional evidence. 

 '' It is plain," he says, " that until recently 

 this evidence has been seriously undervalued. 

 Our students of history have been too gener- 

 ally a book- worshiping race, unwilling to ac- 

 cept any testimony with regard to events that 

 is not found in some contemporary page, 

 either written or priuted. It is not half a 

 century since a distinguished English author 

 pronounced the opinion that no tradition can 

 be trusted which is more than a hundred 

 years old. At the time when this opinion 

 was put forth by Sir George C. Lewis, many 

 voyagers and missionaries in the Pacific is- 

 lands were accumulating traditional testimony 

 of vast and varied origin, which is now ad- 



mitted on all hands to prove the occurrence 

 of events that must have taken place at suc- 

 cessive periods extending over the last two 

 thousand years. The Brief History of the 

 Hawaiian People, by Prof. W. B. Alexander, 

 of Honolulu, published in 1891, 'by order of 

 the Board of Education of the Hawaiian King- 

 dom,' recounts as unquestionable facts many 

 voyages, migrations, battles, royal and priest- 

 ly accessions, marriages, and deaths which 

 have occurred in the Sandwich Islands and 

 other groups, from the eleventh century to 

 our own time. At the other extremity of the 

 great ocean the Polynesian Society, established 

 at Wellington, New Zealand, has published 

 in its excellent quarterly journal communica- 

 tions from able contributors relating to vari- 

 ous histories, and carrying them back, with 

 the aid of numerous mutually confirmatory 

 genealogies, for many centuries, with un- 

 hesitating belief in their general truth. In 

 this way the history of the peopling of the 

 vast Polynesian region, extending over a 

 space larger than North America, and cover- 

 ing at least twenty centuries, is gradually be- 

 coming known to us as surely, if not as 

 minutely, as that of the countries of Europe 

 during the same period. The question natu- 

 rally arises whether we may not hope to re- 

 cover the history of aboriginal America for 

 at least the same length of time. . . . We 

 have every reason to feel assured that in the 

 three hundred Indian reservations and recog- 

 nized bands of the United States and Canada, 

 with populations varying from less than a 

 hundred to more than twenty thousand, and 

 comprising many men and women of good 

 education and superior intelligence, there are 

 mines of traditional lore ready to yield re- 

 turns of inestimable value to well-qualified 

 and sympathetic explorers." 



Mat^hona Granaries. Grain is stored by 

 the natives of Mashonaland in circular 

 granaries, which are miniature copies of their 

 own huts. Near the source of the Ingazuri 

 River the railroad surveying party unexpect- 

 edly came across a collection of fifty or sixty 

 granaries, belonging to a neighboring village, 

 and in charge of two watchmen. " The clean 

 surface of the granite rock formed the floor 

 of the granaries ; they were perched on 

 bowlders, without regard to order, where a 

 flat surface offered a favorable location. 



