HOLMES] DISTRIBUTION OF THE IMPLEMENTS 135 



iiiformatiou, for the art remains are stiiiplc and lioiiiogeneous, giving no 

 Lint of tlie presence in tliis region of any other tlian the historic tribes. 

 The region is nearly identical with that explored l)y that intrepid and 

 illustrious adventurer and colonist, John Smith, whose accounts of the 

 natives are among our most valuable contributions to the aboriginal 

 history of the Atlantic states. 



DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS 

 GEOLomC DISTKIBUTION OF STONE 



The geology of the tidewater country is wholly unlike that of the 

 highland, and the rocks available to the aborigines in the two regions 

 were not only different in distrilmtion but peculiar in the shapes they 

 took and in other features that aftect the character of the utensils 

 made and employed. In the highland, west of the dotted line on the 

 mai> forming plate i, the varieties of rock occur in massive forms and 

 with definite independent distribution. The workable varieties, such 

 as quartz, quartzite, rhyolite, jasper, and flint. Mere much sought by 

 the aborigines of the lowland. Fragmental material was to be ob- 

 tained almost everywhere on the surface, but choice varieties were 

 confined to limited areas and often to distant regions, and where the 

 surfiice exposures were not sufficient to sujjply the demand, (piarrying 

 was resorted to and the work of extracting, transporting, and trading 

 or exchanging the stone must have become an important factor in the 

 lives of the peoi)le. The masses of rock were uncovered, broken up, 

 and tested ; the choice pieces were selected and reduced to forms 

 approximating the imi^lements to be made, and in this shape they 

 were carried to the lowland. 



In the lowland all varieties of hard stones are fragmental, and the 

 species are intermingled in varied ways. These fragments of rock are 

 not merely broken, angular pieces, such as characterize the surface of 

 the highland, but are rounded masses and bits known as bowlders or 

 cobbles and pebbles, and comprise chiefly such tough, flinty, homoge- 

 neous stones as are available in the arts of primitive man. Nature, in 

 her own way, selected from the highland along the stream courses the 

 very choicest bits of the crumbled rocks, reduced thcni in hundreds of 

 cataract mills and in the breakers of the seashore to rounded forms, 

 and deposited them in what are now the lowlands, in great heaps and 

 beds, ready to the hand of primitive man. 



At first it would seem to even the keenest observer that a cobble or 

 ovoid bowlder or pebble would be a difficult form of stone to utilize in 

 making knives, spearheads, arrowpoints, drills, and scrapers. The 

 smooth, rounded mass had to be transformed into a thin blade, every 

 contour of which is incisive or angular. So far apart are the two 

 classes of forms that few people have thought of the bowlder as a 

 prominent source of these objects. But when we look into the matter 



