270 



observed, is exactly similar in principle to the method of drilling 

 glass with a diamond spark, as at present employed. 



There are numerous examples of holes drilled to remarkable 

 depths and with remarkable accuracy, in minerals of considerable 

 hardness ; a process that cannot be designated otherwise than as 

 wonderful, when the means and appliances of this rude age are con- 

 sidered. 



Division Third. This department embraces much the most charac- 

 teristic and abundant specimens of the stone period. They are 

 always chipped^ never in any instance ground and polished into the 

 various forms of spear and arrow heads for war or the chase, or into 

 cutting tools of minerals, more or less suited to the mode of construc- 

 tion and their object. 



When the material best suited was not found in the vicinity, 

 there is abundant evidence that it was transported from distant 

 parts, and it is probable that some of the articles which have em- 

 barrassed observers and students in this branch of ethnological re- 

 search, were merely forms prepared for convenient transportation by 

 the removal of unessential portions. It is an inevitable deduction, 

 however, from the art as perfected in the best material, that it 

 enabled those who were adepts, to work slates, sandstones, and im- 

 perfectly crystallized quartz, into forms not less remarkable, when 

 their structure is considered, than those made of the minerals best 

 adapted for the purpose. 



The process evidently practised in almost all ages of the world 

 has been abandoned or lost in all, when the knowledge of metal 

 superseded the more refractory and less perfect material, but there 

 are tribes on our own continent still who have no other resource; 

 among them^ the art has been witnessed in a few instances. The 

 gallant Smith, whose memory is embalmed in the romantic history 

 of Pocahontas, gives the first recorded, though brief notice of the 

 art as practised by the Indians of Virginia, in his work entitled 

 ^' Voyages and Discoveries of Captain John Smith in Virginia, Sixth 

 Voyage, 1606." 



"His arrow-head he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he 

 ever weareth at his bracept, of a splint of a stone or glasse in the 

 form of a heart, and these they glew to the end of their arrowes." 



One or two other travellers have written upon the subject, but 

 their observations want minute exactitude in matters that do not 

 appear to have been observed. The following description is drawn 

 up from the remarks of an eye-witness, among the Shasty and North 

 California Indians, during that part of the United States Exploring 



