516 REPORT—1899. 
When the groove is sufficiently deep’ to hold the cutter in place, this 
apparatus is thrown aside and the cutting is continued without its aid. 
Water is used throughout the process to keep the cut clean and open. 
Rock crystals of various kinds were employed for the purpose, agate being 
a favourite. I have attempted cutting the jade block with an agate 
crystal myself ; and, although the progress is not so rapid as with the 
sandstone grinder, the crystal soon cuts into the stone, and there can 
be no doubt that the boulders can be cut in this manner. And that 
they were so cut sometimes in the old days is perfectly clear from the 
evidence of the grooves themselves, which in such cases are entirely 
different from the curvilinear grooves made by the bevelled sandstone. 
They are distinctly angular, and the bottom of the cut narrows to a point, 
the outline of the cut having the appearance of a triangle standing on 
its apex. Mr. Smith must either have secured no specimens of this 
kind of grooving or have overlooked the difference between this and the 
rounded grooves given in his illustrations. 
The advantage of cutting with a crystal over the sandstone grinder 
would appear to be a saving of material, less of the block being cut away 
in the process ; and although there is no scarcity of greenstone blocks, they 
are not all of jade or of the first quality, and this fact may have weighed 
with the cutter at times. In any case, whatever the reason may have 
been, the fact remains that the ancient stone cutters employed both crystal 
and sandstone to cut out their adzes and chisels from the rough block. 
The polish afterwards put upon these and others of their polished tools and 
utensils was effected by first rubbing with rushes and afterwards with the 
naked hand. The old Indians would sit for hours together by the camp 
fire rubbing a stone in this manner ; and I was informed that the polish 
found on some of the highly finished stone pestles or hammers would take 
more than one person’s lifetime to effect. I secured some good examples 
of the crystal-cut boulders in my last visit to Lytton. Some of these are 
now in the Provincial Museum at Victoria, and a particularly interesting 
specimen I recently forwarded to the Dominion Geological Survey Museum 
at Ottawa. This last is doubly interesting from the fact that it exhibits 
in itself the two different modes of cutting, some of the grooves being 
curvilinear in section and some angular. The workman who owned this 
block, however, favoured the grindstone method, for on one of its sur- 
faces we find three shallow, rounded grooves, parallel to each other, as if 
the cutter had been marking the block off into sections to see how many 
pieces he could cut out of it. It is quite possible that the cutter found it 
easier to start his cuts by grinding, and when the groove was deep enough 
to hold his crystal, he jinished the cut by this means. This particular 
block favours this idea. At any rate it is perfectly clear that there were 
two methods of cutting employed, and not one as indicated by Mr. 
Smith. 
I concur with Mr. Smith in his conclusion that there is no evidence 
for supposing the old-time dwellers on these prehistoric camp sites to be 
of a different race from the present tribes. No evidence as yet has been 
gathered which takes us back more than a few centuries at most. 
Mr. Smith secured many skulls from this locality, and it would have been 
interesting if the indices of these had been compared with the indices of 
the heads of the present N’tlaka’pamugq. I think they will be found 
interesting. In speaking of the arrow-heads of this district Mr. Smith 
remarked that the prehistoric points were invariably larger than the more 
