OBSERVATIONS ON STONE-CHIPPING. 887 



on a side, some too heavy for me to lift into my wagon without assist- 

 ance (the largest I have seen was taken from near the center of a large 

 mound in Bath County, Kentucky ; it had twenty-seven cups one side 

 and a greater number on the other). Many have been carried away from 

 the flaking ground and used as cornerstones for log cabins or built into 

 hearths and fire-backs to their wooden curb fireplaces, with their stick- 

 andclay daubed chimneys. So many being found where the manu- 

 facturing of stone implements has been so extensively carried on is 

 suggestive to a mechanic that they were either made on the ground and 

 kept on hand for sale, or they were tools in some way used in their 

 works. That they were newly made can hardly be the case, for very fre- 

 quently one cup has been worn into another. This^ considering their 

 sharp giit, rather points to some grinding process. Had they been 

 for paint receptacles or pallets, we would expect to find them at dwell- 

 ing places (where the Indians would naturally do their dressing and 

 jjainting), and not in their workshops. 



On the opposite side of the Saline River, due south of the flaking 

 bank, a spur from the main ridge terminates abruptly by a very steep 

 descent to the bottom lafids, which at this point have a breadth of about 

 50 yards ; at the foot of this bluff are masses of sandstone ; they also 

 project out of the steepest portion of the earth (at a time long past about 

 100 feet high), from the top of which the ascent is gradual to the crown 

 of the ridge, forming a beautiful inclined plateau extending with the 

 ridge until it is lost by steep inclines into the valley of the Little Sa- 

 line, a small tributary that has cut through the ridge and falls into the 

 Saline 1| miles above its junction with the Ohio, aod midway between 

 its mouth and the first ripple. This plateau, when I first saw it, in 1854, 

 was covered with heavy timber, many trees being from 5 feet to 6 feet 

 in diameter. The broad valley of the Little Saline had some portions 

 that are above the ordinary overflows cleared and under cultivation as 

 early as 1834. The slope from the ridge to the Saline, including its 

 bottom lands, have been under process of clearing since 1859. After 

 the plow had loosened the soil, and it had been washed by the rains, 

 both the slope and thebottoms have been rich in stone relics, the bot- 

 toms — particularly, in the agricultural implements of the Mound Builders. 

 Climbing the steep directly opposite the flaking bank, chips of chert are 

 found mixed through all the soil that has been worked from above, 

 changing the rock bluff" into the present steep incline, on the to[) of 

 whi(!h on its turn from the steep to the gradual slope, another flaking 

 place has been exposed. There within a space of two acres and not 

 over an hour's tramp, on the fresh-plowed earth, I found scattered over 

 twenty specimens of the cup-stones, which I collected and piled in a heap. 

 This is another instance of their having been left among the ottal of a 



workshop. 



In the valley formed by the junction of the Big and Little Saline, oc- 

 cur extensive earth-works, long walls, mounds, &c. The largest of the 



