PI ED R AS PIN TAD AS OF COLORADO. 48» 
sels and the solid stone cooking vessels. These latter articles are wonderful. 
The largest is a globular vessel of solid stone chipped out of the hardest kind of 
Tock and as round as a ball. It is hollow and has been patiently chipped out 
iintil the globe is quite hollow, about two inches thick, with an aperture about 
four inches in diameter at the top. It still bears the marks of fire, although it 
has been buried, perhaps, two centuries. There are several of these globular 
stone cooking vessels in Clark's collection and dozens of other aboriginal curios- 
ities. 
Dentistry seems to have been quite an art in the days when the extinct race 
held control here. Among the store of curiosities exhumed from the graves 
•upon the Santa Barbara Islands and now in Clark's collection are six or seven 
set of false teeth. They are formed each from a shell which was fashioned to fit 
the roof of the mouth or could be adjusted outside of the gums. These shell 
teeth are perfectly formed and easily adjustable. Whether they were used for 
ornament or for mastication of food is one of those mysteries the grave still holds 
in concealment. The water bottles are round and are of woven glass mixed with 
-asphaltum. The pipes are tubes of agate or fine colored stones gathered upon 
the beach. How the natives turned and polished this hard flint-like stone and 
then drilled holes through it so as to use it for a pipe is a mystery. Among these 
recently exhumed curiosties from the Santa Barbara Islands are dozens of highly 
polished stone rings; some of them have been broken, but have been mended 
with cement of which asphaltum is the principal ingredient. This cement used 
by these extinct tribes appears to have been durable and effective, as the shat- 
tered stone rings united by it are as strong and as solid as those not damaged. 
The islanders appear to have made good use of seal's teeth and whalebone. 
The latter, when found in a petrified state, was used as our Chinese abalone 
gatherers use an iron bar — to pry up the mollusks from the rocks. Mr. Clark has 
one of these petrified bone crowbars, one side of which was used as a creator of 
fire. Its rough side resembles a file, and the rapid friction between it and a 
piece of dry wood creates fire — Santa Barbara Independent. 
PIEDRAS PINTADAS OF COLORADO. 
CAPTAIN E. L. BERTHOUD. 
I inclose to you three photographs of prehistoric (?) carving that I consider 
of unusual interest to antiquarians and historians. I have just returned from a 
railroad survey in the San Juan Mountains, south of the head of the Rio Del 
Norte, and in Rio Grande County, Colorado ; and on this trip I learned that 
there was a locality near where ancient carvings existed. 
The place is twenty miles southeast of Rio t)el Norte, at the entrance^of the 
Canon of the Piedra Pintada (Painted Rock) Creek. The carvings are found on 
the right of the canon, or valley, and upon volcanic rock. They bear the marks 
