ON THE STONE AGE. 69 



was in progress of erection, they were not designed as any slight to the manes of the dead. 

 In districts remote from those where the flint abounds, flakes and chips of the prized 

 material m.nst have been in constant demand to replenish the sheaf of arrows, and replace 

 the lost or broken lance, knife, and scraper. The trader would barter the raw material for 

 furs and other equivalents ; or the industrious miner would carry olF an adequate supply 

 for his own future use. Such small objects, possessing a universally appreciable value, 

 would be as available for current change as the African cowrie, the loqua shells of the 

 Pacific coast, or the wampum-beads of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. If 

 this assumption be correct, the scattering of flint flakes, while the mound was being piled 

 over the grave, was a form of largess not less significant than any later tribute of rever- 

 ence to the dead. 



The sources whence such supplies of raw material of the old flint-worker were 

 derived, have been sufficiently explored to furnish confirmatory evidence of some, at least, 

 of the deductions suggested by other indications thus far noted. The archaeologists 

 of Europe are now familiar with many localities which have been the cjuarries and 

 workshops, as well as the settled abodes, of palœolithic and neolithic man ; nor are such 

 unknown to us in the New "World, though research has to be greatly extended before 

 definite conclusions can be accepted relative to the earliest presence of man on the American 

 continent. Flint and stone implements of every variety of form, and nearly every degree of 

 rudeness, abound in the soil of the New World. But in estimating the true significance 

 of su.ch evidence, it has to be borne in remembrance that its indigenous population has not 

 even now abandoned the arts of their Stone period. Implements have already been 

 referred to still in use among the Shoshone, Texas, and other living tribes, ruder than 

 any yet recovered from the river-drift of France or England ; whilst others, more nearly 

 resembling the palaeolithic types, have been met with on this continent, some of them 

 imbedded in the ancient rolled gravels, or glacial drift, and associated with the bones of 

 the mastodon and other fossil mammals But the evidence as to their antiquity or palaeo- 

 lithic origin has been, at best, doubtful. An imperfect flint knife, now in the museum of 

 the University of Toronto, was recovered from a depth of upwards of fourteen feet, among 

 rolled gravel and gold-bearing quartz of the G-rinnel Leads in Kansas Territory. Flint 

 implements from the auriferous gravel of California were produced at the Paris Exposition 

 of 1855. According to the G-eological Survey of Illinois for 1866, stone axes and flint spear- 

 heads were obtained from a bed of local drift near Alton, underlying the loess, and at the 

 same depth as bones of the mastodon. Similar discoveries have been repeatedly noted in 

 Southern States. The river Chattahoochee, in Georgia, in its course down the Nacoochee 

 valley, flows through a rich auriferous region. Explorers in search for gold have made 

 extensive cuttings through the underlying drift-gravel, down to the slate rock iipon 

 which it rests ; and duriug one of these excavations, at a depth of nine feet, intermingled 

 with the gravel and boulders of the drift, three large implements were found, nearly 

 resembling the rude flint hatchets of the drift type. Such examples, however, though 

 repeatedly noted, liaA'e, thus far, been too isolated to admit of their use for any such 

 comprehensive inductions as the disclosures of the glacial drift of north-western Europe 

 have justified. The evidence hitherto adduced, when the implements of this class have 

 been of flint, has failed to establish their palaeolithic age, notwithstanding their recovery 

 from ancient gravels. Implements of flint occur in great abundance throughout vast 



