18 



KELIQUIJE AQUITANICJE. 



the Western Esquimaux tribes, at and north of Icy Cape, in making their stone 

 implements. He says : 



" Cape Lisburne is about sixty feet in height, composed of a greyish dolomite, in which many fossil encri- 

 nites, corals, and Crustacea are found. Near the base, about four feet above the sea-level, a vein of chert is 

 found, on which this friable stone lies. It varies from about nine inches inland (as exposed) to about three 

 or four inches as it is lost in the gravelly beach. It is broken in vertical shivers, or conchoidal plates, 

 by a slight tap with the hammer (formed of a very stubborn jade, or nephrite), the splinters affording a 

 ringing sound like glass or pottery. The fragments, indeed, in many 



instances, were already sufficiently formed without human aid for the Fig. 136. Fig. 13 a. 



ordinary purposes of flaying, or skinning off the superfluous fat from 

 hides, etc. ; indeed it then occurred to me that many fragments, where 

 nature seemed either to have pressed heavily, or acted by frost, were so 

 splintered and almost formed by nature to be used as arrow- or spear- 

 heads without further attention to chipping. But to the process which 

 they pursue in effecting the fine regular serrated edges which you will 

 notice in those specimens now before you. 



" Possibly, had I not witnessed the operation, and been at the time one 

 of the first Europeans with whom they ever held communion, the idea 

 would have remained undisputed that ' they owed their formation to the 

 stroke of the hammer.' Being a working amateur mechanic myself, and 

 having practised in a very similar manner on glass with a penny-piece 

 in 1815, I was not at all surprised at witnessing the modus operand*. 

 Selecting a log of wood, in which a spoon-shaped cavity was cut, they 

 placed the splinter to be worked over it, and by pressing gently along the 

 margin vertically, first on one side, then the other, as one would set 

 a saw, they splintered off alternate fragments until the object, thus 

 properly outlined, presented the spear or arrow-head form, with two 

 cutting serrated sides. 



" But let us revert to this instrument, for the use of which the untaught 

 would never imagine a purpose, and, I suspect, was not witnessed or 

 deemed worthy of notice by any other individual of the expedition. 



"First, this instrument (again ornamented) has a graceful outline. 

 The handle is of fine fossil ivory. That would be too soft to deal with 

 flint or chert in the manner required. But they discovered that the 

 point of the deer-horn* is harder, and also more stubborn ; therefore, in a 

 slit, like lead in our pencils, they introduced a slip of this substance and 

 secured it by a strong thong, put on wet, but which on drying becomes 

 very rigid. Here we cannot fail to trace ingenuity, ability, and a view to 

 ornament. It is the point of deer-horn which, refusing to yield, drives 

 off the fine conchoidal splinters from the chert. 



" I cannot here omit remarking that the very same process is pursued by the Indians of Mexican origin in 



Fig. 13. Stone-chipper used by 

 the Esquimaux (Christy Col- 

 lection). Half nat. size. 



a, Seen from above. 

 b, Edge view. 



"Wherever horn is named, it refers to the hard point of the antler of the Eeindeer.'' 



