1030 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1895. 



The fact that growing in the debris of one of these ancient pits was 

 a hemlock having 395 annular rings places the date of the excava- 

 tions before the days of Columbus. That they were made by a race 

 distinct from the present Indians is inferred from the fact that the 

 Indians knew nothing of copper in place ; and they had no traditions 

 of the ancient copper mines which cover the entire copper belt, and 

 which have been to modern miners the best indications of the presence 

 of that metal. Within 2 miles of one of these "ancient diggings," 

 as they are called, the copper rock was found. 



The question here arises, Was the Ontonagon bowlder detached by 

 glacial action and carried southwesterly along the drift to the point 

 whence eventually it dropped into the bed of the river ; or is it the 

 product of the mining operations of that busy people whose well-built 

 boats with each recurring summer in past ages dotted the clear waters 

 of Lake Superior, and whose keen search led them to the outcrops of 

 copper as well among the iuhospitable thickets of the mainland as on 

 the wave-lashed islands of the greatest of lakes? 



Such is the question propounded by Mr. Edwin J. Hulbert, who 

 spent the best years of his life in a study of the copper country ; and 

 whose recently published work on "The Calumet Conglomerate" 

 marks him as the most scientific explorer who ever accomplished great 

 results in the Lake Superior copper country. Doubtless the question 

 is unanswerable ; but whether nature or man tore the copper rock from 

 its original home, it stands to-day as the first considerably shipment of 

 copper from the Lake Superior region and the largest mass ever taken 

 away from a mine. It is unique also in this: The mines of the Ontona- 

 gon region belong to the past. The great Minnesota mine from which 

 a 500-ton bowlder, valued at over $200,000, was taken, and whose 

 stockholders received $30 for every dollar they i)ut in, has long ago 

 been surpassed by the Calumet & Hecla, whose ore contains but an 

 insignificant proportion of mass copper. There are no more masses of 

 virgin copper to be found ; and the Ontonagon bowlder is not only the 

 first, but it is also the last remaining representative of its kind. 



