38 KELIQTJIJE AQUITANIC^E. 



in which it is referred to as a " Pick or Axe of Stag's Horn, from Mackenzie 

 River." T. E. J. 



Rosebank, Victoria, Vancouver's Island, July 16, 1866. 



SIR, I received a few days ago your favour of the 22nd May, and have much 

 pleasure in giving you any information that may tend to elucidate the very 

 interesting subject which you have in hand. 



As regards the " British-Columbian " Horn 1 [see the Appendix to this Letter 

 for the Notes indicated by the Numbers i-u] sketched by you in the margin of 

 your letter [this is the specimen alluded to above], I think I can at once, and 

 without hesitation, indicate the use for which it was originally intended. 

 It is a chisel, used for various purposes among the Indians of the North-west 

 Coast, but chiefly for raising the large sheets of bark of the Thuja occidentalis 

 during the flow of the sap in summer, and for the excavation of the canoes 

 formed of the wood of the same tree. Fire is first employed to char the 

 surface, which is then easily abraded by means of the bone (or horn) chisel. 

 A repetition of the process, again and again, completes the excavation of the 

 canoe roughly; the finishing strokes are given with an adze or, rather, chisel, 

 handled at an acute angle, and formed originally of stone, but now usually of a 

 piece of iron or steel [fig. 22]. This implement, I may mention, appears to 

 be the exact counterpart of one of corresponding use figured on Egyptian 

 monuments, and is fastened to the handle with leathern thongs in the same 

 way. I allude here to the implement last described, not to the horn chisel 

 sketched by you, which is used alone, by pressure, or by occasionally striking 

 it gently with a mallet. It was probably thus that the upper end of the horn 

 in question was fractured. The ornamental lines I believe to have been engraved 

 merely for the amusement of idle hours, and to have no assignable meaning 

 beyond a taste for ornament. Such engravings, or others resembling them, are 

 very common among the Indians of this Coast, originating from taste partly, 

 and partly as marks distinctive of private property in various articles of domestic 

 use. The short projecting piece of the brow-antler that appears in your sketch 

 is designedly left to afford a firm hold to the lower hand while exerting pressure 

 for cutting-purposes. 



I. have examined with much interest the engravings [a set of the Plates B. of 

 the first two numbers of this Work] enclosed by you, representing some of the 

 antiquities discovered in Dordogne. The appearance of these, or their counter- 

 parts, is very familiar; and I think I can assign an application for most of 



