200 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



Strata of the novaculite. Some are one hundred to three hundred feet in length, 

 but the greater number of these workings consist of shallow pits twenty to 

 fifty feet in length, probably ten to thirty feet in width originally, before 

 caving, and fifteen to twenty-five feet deep, being opened at intervals irregularly 

 along the course of the layers of the novaculite most useful to those doing the 

 work. 



The whole ridge is composed of novaculite, with a strike N. G5 degrees E., 

 dipping south at fifty to sixty degrees. Most of the novacu- 

 [Character of the jj^-g jg coarse-grained, impure, and unsuitable for the manu- 

 facture of implements. On the crest of the divide several 

 beds of novaculite outcrop, which are of very fine quality and are interbedded 

 with the coarser strata. These pure beds are from five to twenty-five feet in 

 thickness. The rock is white, yellowish, or bluish white in color, breaking 

 readily with a smooth conchoidal fracture. The whole surface of the ridge in 

 the vicinity is covered with chips of pink, red, or white novaculite, rarely dark- 

 colored or black, and always having a fine-grained structure. The pure white 

 agate-like novaculite being evidently the most worked and sought for, the waste 

 dumps show that coarse-grained, impure, and much-fractured rock was dis- 

 carded. Many of these Hint chips show serrated edges, as if discarded after an 

 attempt had been made to fashion an arrow head or cutting tool. 



The tools used l)y these ancient miners appear to have been balls of stone or 

 natural bowlders of three sizes, the smallest one and a half 

 [Quarry Sledges] to two and a half inches in diameter, the second size three to 

 four inches, and the largest six to eight inches in diameter ; 

 these bowlders or stone hammers are mostly dark grey syenite ; some bowlders 

 of hard igneous rocks as well as hard quartzite of grey and brown shades of 

 color. None of these rocks occur in the ridge, these bowlders being evidently 

 brought from the beds of streams draining the area covered by the eruptive 

 rocks to the southeast, the nearest localities from which these tools could have 

 been obtained being some two miles distant. 



In the extent of one and a half miles examined on the crest of this divide 

 I would estimate the aggregate quantity of material which 

 must have been excavated at 100,000 cubic yards. 



The product of these wonderftil workings doubtless comprised 

 multitudes of chipped implements, mostly of rather small size, ex- 

 amples of which are found in every valley and on every hill in the 

 region about. The rejected forms and the hammers used are identi- 

 cal with those from the Indian Mountain site. 



