176 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY ; OR, 



but I had failed hitherto in detecting in the stone, portions 

 of sufficient bulk for the formation of either the beads or the 

 parallelograms. On this visit to the ichthyolite beds, how- 

 ever, I picked up a nodule that inclosed a mass of the jet 

 large enough to admit of being fashioned into trinkets of as 

 great bulk as any of the ancient ones I have yet seen, and a 

 portion of which I succeeded in actually forming into a par- 

 allelogram, that could not have been distinguished from those 

 of our old sepulchral urns. It is interesting enough to think, 

 that these fossiliferous beds, altogether unknown to the people 

 of the country for many centuries, and which, when I first 

 discovered them, some twelve or fourteen years ago, were 

 equally unknown to geologists, should have been resorted to 

 for this substance, perhaps thousands of years ago, by the 

 savage aborigines of the district. But our antiquities of the 

 remoter class furnish us with several such facts. It is com- 

 paratively of late years that we have become acquainted with 

 the yellow chalk-flints of Banffshire and Aberdeen ; though 

 before the introduction of iron into the country they seem to 

 have been well known all over the north of Scotland. I have 

 never yet seen a stone arrow-head found in any of the north- 

 ern localities, that had not been fashioned out of this hard 

 and splintery substance, a sufficient proof that our ances- 

 tors, ere they had formed their first acquaintance with the 

 metals, were intimately acquainted with at least the mechani- 

 cal properties of the chalk-flint, and knew where in Scotland 

 it was to be found. They were mineralogists enough, too, 

 as their stone battle-axes testify, to know that the best tool- 

 making rock is the axe-stone of Werner ; and in some loca- 

 lities they must have brought their supply of this rather rare 

 mineral from great distances. A history of those arts of 

 savage life, as shown in the relics of our earlier antiquities, 

 which the course of discovery served thoroughly to supplant, 

 but which could not have been earned on without a know- 



