22 S THE ANCIENT MINERS OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 



the rude stone implements with which the old miners seem to have 

 chiefly -wrought. 



The stone hammers, or mauls, by which these ancient workers in 

 metal carried on their operations, consist for the most part of oblong 

 water-worn stones, weighing from ten to twenty pounds. Around 

 the centre of these a groove has been artificially wrought, for the 

 purpose of fastening a handle or withe of some kind, with which to 

 wield them. Some of the specimens that I saw were worn and frac- 

 tured as if from frequent use ; many are found broken, and they are 

 met with in such abundance in the neighborhood of the ancient On- 

 tonagon diggings, that a deep well was pointed out to me, constructed, 

 as I was assured, almost entirely of the stone hammers picked up in its 

 immediate vicinity. I was greatly struck with the close resemblance 

 traceable between these rude mauls of the ancient miners of Onton- 

 agon and some which I have seen obtained from ancient copper 

 workings discovered in North Wales. 



In a communication made to the British Archaeological Institute 

 by the Hon. William Owen Stanley, in 1850,* he gives an account of 

 an ancient working broken into at the copper mines of Llandudno, 

 near the the Great Orme's Head, Caernarvonshire. In this were 

 found mining implements, consisting of chisels, or picks of bronze, 

 and a number of stone mauls of various sizes, described as weighing 

 from about 2 lbs. to 40 lbs., rudely fashioned, having been all, as 

 their appearance suggested, used for breaking, pounding, or detach- 

 ing the ore from the rock, and pertaining, it may be presumed, to a 

 period anterior to the Roman occupation of Britain. These primi- 

 tive implements are stated to be similar to the water-worn stones 

 found on the sea-beach at Pen-Mawr, from which very probably those 

 most suitable for the purpose might have been selected. Mr. Stan- 

 ley also describes others precisely of the same character, and corres- 

 ponding exactly with those found on the shores of Lake Superior, 

 which had been met with in ancient workings in Anglesea. Were 

 we, therefore, disposed to generalize, as some of the archaeologists of 

 this continent are prone to do, from such analogies, we might trace in 

 this correspondence between the ancient mining implements of Lake 

 Superior and of North Wales, a confirmation of the supposed colo- 

 nization of America, in the twelfth century, by Madoc, the son of 

 Owen G-wynnedd, king of North Wales, who, according to the Welsh 

 chroniclers, having been forced by civil commotions to leave his na- 

 tive country, set sail with a small fleet in 1170, and directing his 

 course westward, landed, after a voyage of some weeks, in a country 



* Archaeological Journal, vol. vii, p. s . 



