OBSERVATIONS ON STONE-CHIPPING. S77 



the exceptip4i of a narrow strij) along the bank of the Saline, which had 

 been cleared for railroad coal duuij), saw-mill, shoi)s, and dwellings. 

 The most of the cleared portion was a range of low sepulchral mounds 

 crowded together. In cutting into them for foundations, small sized stone 

 cists were exposed, none over 4 feet in length, with a single exception; 

 this was (in excavating foundations for saw mill boiler in the side ot 

 the largest of the mounds,) a skeleton at full length, surrounded by and 

 covered with thin sandstone slabs, much as the small cists were formed. 

 With this skeleton were found two small clay pots, some shell beads, 

 a flint gun-lock, barrel, and metal trimmings of an old English musket, 

 the stock BO decayed that it fell to pieces when being taken out — no 

 doubt a recent surface burial ; in fact, human bones were found near 

 the surface of all these mounds. The small cists over which they were 

 originally raised contained nothing but fragments of bones, teeth, and 

 occasionally a stone celt and a few flaked implements. The first in- 

 dication of relics on what has proved to be a great stone implement 

 manufactory was in sinking a cistern on the ridge about 200 yards from 

 the riv^r. This went through a mass of flint chips. By the year 1859 

 the little clearing around the house where the cistern was sunk had 

 joined with the cleared strip on the river banks, making in all a clearing 

 of some 25 acres. Heavy rains after the first plowing exposed some few 

 specimens of spear and arrow points ; the next i)lowing, a still greater 

 number. But it was not until the great flood of the winter of 1862 and 

 1863 that overflowed this ridge some 3 or 4 feet, with a rapid current, 

 that the portion under cultivation north of the mounds on the river bank 

 was denuded, exposing over 6 acres of what at first appeared to be a mass 

 of chips or stone rubbish ; but amongst it were found many hammer 

 stones, celts, grooved axes, cores, flakes, almost innumerable scrapers, 

 and other implements, pieces of broken, much-decayed bone, but no per- 

 fect bone implements, many tines of the buck or stag, all of which bore 

 evidence of having been scraped to a point. On exposure to the air they 

 fell to pieces. Among this waste it was rare to find fragments of rude 

 pottery, though they abound among the mounds near the river bank, 

 and further north on the same ridge, wliere burnt sandstones, black earth 

 full of fragments of shells and bone, sliow the site of a settlement — the 

 field being nothing but a workshop. The great August flood of 1875, 

 and the winter floods of 1881, 1882, and 1883 continued the work of de- 

 nudation until the ground became unfit for cultivation, and was aban 

 doned. The greatest number of cores, scattered flakes, finished and 

 unfinished implements, are of the chert, from a depression in a ridge 3 

 miles to the south-east, where there is evidence ot large quantities hav- 

 ing been quarried. I have found a few (;ores of the white chert from Mis- 

 souri, and the red and yellow jasi)er of Kentucky and Tennessee; but 

 the flakes of these have mostly been found in nests or small caches, 

 many of which have been exposed, and in every case the flakes they 

 contained were more or less worked on their edges, whereas the flak<is 



