70 HIS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 



Who shaped it so ? and when ? and why ? No civilized 

 men make such things ; so the imagination easily leaps 

 back to the uncounted years when savages roamed these 

 hills. Some one of them must have shaped the peculiar 

 implement, by patiently pecking at it with another stone, 

 until it suited his purpose. The red hands which once 

 held it are gone forever ; the dark eyes which looked 

 sharply upon it to shape it accurately are dead, with all 

 the picturesque events of that primeval life. Only the 

 stone is left. The handle which once was bound to it 

 has been released by the decay of nature, to mingle with 

 the invisible gases. Because so much has gone forever, 

 the stone is the more precious, and antiquarians grow to 

 love stones for their indestructibility. So many of these 

 implements have been found, of so great a variety, in 

 such scattered places, that the whole town is easily con- 

 victed of a long period of Indian settlement. 



Stone axes from Barn Hill, in Beechwood, and from 

 Pond Hill, near Lily Pond, and one from the Osgood 

 school yard, and from many other places, have been found 

 within a few years. 



A neat tomahawk, with a groove around it, just like the 

 grooves around the axes, for binding on the haft, was 

 plowed up on the border of Straits Pond some thirty 

 years ago, and is now in the collection kept in the town 

 library. 



An adze, measuring over five inches long, with an edge 

 polished smoothly two and a half inches broad, was found 

 near Lily Pond about fifty years ago. It has no groove 

 for the handle, neither has any other of the several adzes 

 thus far collected. They were used with short han- 

 dles for digging out the inside of canoes, and could be 

 bound very firmly without grooves, as can be seen by ex- 

 amining some specimens still hafted, in the Harvard 

 Museum of Anthropology. 



A gouge, very thick and clumsy, but polished smooth 



