[uizz-rour] PREHISTORIC MAN IN BRITISH COLUMBIA 113 
few of stone are recovered. With the middens on the shores of Burrard 
Inlet the reverse is the case. Great numbers of stone instruments, par- 
ticularly arrow- and spear-heads, have been picked up from the beach 
which have been washed from the old middens by the tides; the shore 
at several points here having sunk apparently some feet below its former 
level. In addition to the spear- and arrow-heads thus found, I have dis- 
covered at more than one point along these shores—which seem to be an 
old armoury of the midden people of that neighbourhood—several maga- 
zines or stores of designed but unfinished spear- and arrow-heads, all bear- 
ing the undoubted marks, in the method of their cleavage, of the skilled 
and experienced stone worker. A few well-directed blows from a skilful 
hand have divided larger masses of desirable stone into numbers of tri- 
angular and ovate pieces, easily transported and worked up into finished 
points at the arrow-maker’s leisure. The stone commonly thus broken 
up was either a dark argillaceous boulder of crystalline character or 
boulders of dark gray basalt; and as I have been unable to find any of 
the former in whole blocks or boulders, on the shores of Burrard Inlet or 
elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the breaking had probably been done at 
some other point by others; from whom they were not unlikely bartered 
tor dried clams, of which they had an inexhaustible supply here, and 
which, we know, were highly prized by inland-dwelling tribes. And as 
the arrow- and spear-heads [ possess, taken from the Lytton burial heaps, 
are of the same material it is not unlikely that this is the direction from 
which these stones came, as also the jade tools—jade boulders being occa- 
sionally found in the Thompson. 
It may now be interesting to pass from the middens and offer a few 
remarks on the tumuli or burial mounds of this region. As far as is 
known at present the mounds of British Columbia seem to be confined to 
the Cowitchin area. This may not be so in reality. It so happens that 
on account of that area being the most settled and accessible it has re- 
ceived the most attention from explorers ; and this seeming restriction of 
area may thus be accounted for. As the country becomes more widely 
settled and opened up others will most probably be found in other parts of 
the province. In order to describe these mounds the better I shall divide 
them into two groups — the Mainland group and the Vancouver Island 
group. Those on the island were first discovered some twenty years ago ; 
and the late Mr. James Richardson, of the Dominion Geological Survey, 
and Mr. James Deans, of Victoria, B. C., opened up some of them ; but 
the result of the investigation was never published, I think. I shall defer 
a description of these for a later occasion, my knowledge of them at the 
present time being too limited for me to speak with any exactitude 
about them, and confine my remarks to the Mainland group, which seems 
the more interesting of the two and which received its first systematic 
examination at the writer's hands, and upon which he feels he may with 
more propriety speak. 
Sec. IL, 1895. 8. 
