Perry.] 220 [December 2, 



tlie remains of a more ancient people that inhabited the country at a 

 far earlier day. 



This conjecture leads me to notice the other burial-place already 

 referred to. It is situated on what is called in the neighborhood the 

 " old hemp yard." This is about two miles north of Swanton Falls, 

 and is not very far from the line Avhich separates the township of 

 Swanton from that of Highgate. The above-cited name was given 

 to this locality, not, as is often affirmed, because hemp was formerly 

 raised on the ground, but because when the first settlements were 

 effected it was densely covered with thrifty Norway pines, which, as 

 the tradition has it, grew as thick and straight as hemp. 



This latter place of sejjulture is of great antiquity. It belonged to 

 a race long since extinct, a race which inhabited the country before 

 either the Iroquois or the Algonquins — the two great contemporaneous 

 nations of Red Men in the region — came upon the stage of action. 

 Of the origin of this burial-ground, and of the jieople whose remains 

 were here entombed, the St. Francis Indians, as I am credibly in- 

 formed, knew nothing. Respecting them, they even had no tradition, 

 as I was once told by one of the few surviving members of the tribe. 

 Upon the graves the largest trees were in full vigor, or already wan- 

 ing — and we are ignorant how many had previously matured, and 

 gone to decay — when the region was first settled by whites. Indian 

 relics are now often found directly beneath huge stumps, which still 

 remain as a witness of the trees Avhich must have taken root, flour- 

 ished for centuries, and grown old on the resting-place, and since the 

 disappearance of this more ancient peojile. 



From these graves I have collected pieces of earthern ware, adorned 

 with curious hieroglyphics of undoubted antiquity, and which to my 

 mind give almost unmistakable evidence, if not of Asiatic origin, at least 

 of a people closely allied in their sentiments and habits to the nations of 

 the East. Reference is now more particularly made to earthen tubes, 

 somewhat in the shape of a flute or i)ipe, from an inch to an inch and 

 a half In diameter, and from about fifteen inche's to two feet in length, 

 ornamented with hieroglyphics of a moral or religious character. 

 These symbols, so far as I can make them out, are closely akin to 

 those employed as well in the Eleusinian rites, as in the old Cyribaic 

 mysteries of Samothrace. Amongst these remains there are also 

 specimens which might seem at once to hint at the Noachian deluge, 

 and to symbolize the deliverance from it. A canoe, wilh what ap- 

 pears to be a bird, perhaps a dove, wrought in stone, is one of the 



