56 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vtil. 



been drifted for 30 or 40 feet, and to these there have sometimes 

 been sunk second pits or winzes for ventilation purposes. The 

 piercing or drifting into the rocks was accomplished by heating 

 them to a high temperature with large fires, and then suddenly 

 cooling the rock with water, thereby causing them to crack* 

 The greater advancement in the mining art is displayed in the 

 Evergreen Range, in Ontonagon County, while farther north and 

 on Isle Royale their skill appears to have been somewhat more 

 primitive. In some instances, the aboriginal miners have left 

 large blocks of copper at the bottom of their pits, as unmanageable. 

 In the old Minnesota Mine, one of these masses, weighing seven 

 and a half tons was found at the bottom of their workings, raised 

 on skids, with the branches b ittered off. Numerous stone-ham- 

 mers, -wooden-shovels, wooden-bars, pieces of hides, bark vessels, 

 a few copper implements, and other rude appliinces have 

 been found in their workings. The most common of these are 

 the hammers, which are oval boulders of diorite or granite having 

 sometimes one groove, or even two grooves around the centre, to 

 prevent the straps that fasten the stone to the handle from 

 slipping. The hammers weigh from two or three to more than 

 fifty pounds. All the copper implements that have been found 

 were beaten into their present forms and were not made by cast- 

 ing the molten metal. 



After the Stone-hummer People left this region to return no 

 more, the shores of Like Superior seem to have become untenant- 

 ed for a time by man ; but when the early Jesuit missionaries 

 visited the lake 250 years ago, they found the south shore thinly 

 peopled by Chippewa Indians. The old men at this time stated 

 that that tribe had recently migrated, and having been driven west- 

 ward, settled about Lake Superior, as this region was unoccupied. 

 La Garde appears to have been the first of the Jesuits who 

 mentioned the existence of copper about Lake Superior, its 

 occurrence he recorded in a work published in Paris in 1636. 

 Thirty years later Claude Allouez noticed the native copper 

 which, in small masses, the Indians regarded as gods. Again, 

 in 1721, De Charlevoix described some of the copper deposits, 

 and the superstitious reverence paid to the metal by the natives. 

 Owing to the representations of Captain Jonathan Carver, who 

 had visited Lake Superior in 1765, an English Mining Com- 

 pany was formed, which commenced operations in 1771 on the 

 Ontonagon River ; but these were abandoned the following year. 



