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FOSSIL MEN. 



take two illustrations from Wilson. One is an ancient 

 burial-place discovered by Dr. Eeynolds near Brock - 

 ville. Here were buried, about fourteen feet below 

 the surface, twenty skeletons, arranged in a circle 

 with their feet towards the centre. Some of the 

 skeletons were of gigantic proportions, but their bones 

 had well-nigh crumbled into dust. With them were 

 found well-made spears and chisels of native copper, 

 stone-chisels, gouges, and arrow-heads, and a curious 

 terra-cotta mask, which Wilson has figured, and which 

 he remarks is Toltecan rather than Indian in its 

 features, and which resembles the heads on earthen 

 vessels of the mound-builders, while he evidently 

 regards the interment as not corresponding with those 

 of the Canadian tribes. It does, however, correspond 

 with old Alleghan interments already mentioned as 

 discovered by Professor Swallow. In one of the 

 mounds explored by him, the bodies, whose bones were 

 in the last stage of decay, lay in the same position as 

 in the Brockville grave, and each had an earthen 

 vessel at its head with a representation of a human 

 face. This mode of burial, the warriors lying in death 

 as they would lie with their feet to the watch-fire, and 

 each with his vessel of water or food at his head, like 

 Saul, King of Israel, of old,* seems to have been 

 peculiar to the Alleghans, and has been recognised in 

 several localities. War parties at least of this people, 

 and possibly also permanent settlements, must have 

 extended themselves to the St. Lawrence river. 

 * 1 Samuel xxvi. 11. 



