1885.] Ancient Rock Inscriptions on the Lake of the Woods. 655 
threads of evidence, which in the web display the checkered life- 
history of the aboriginal peoples of the American continent. I 
am induced to publish this note on the subject at present, rather 
than wait for further opportunities of collecting additional .mate- 
rial, because of the striking resemblance which some of the char- 
acters of these inscriptions bear to those of certain Brazilian rock 
inscriptions figured by Mr. John C. Branner in his interesting 
paper in the December number of the AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
The Lake of the Woods is divided about its middle into two 
parts, a northern and a’southern, by a large peninsula extending 
from the neck of land at Turtle Portage on the east side of the 
lake to within a very few miles of the west shore. On the north 
side of this peninsula, z. e., on the south shore of the northern 
half of the lake, about mid-way between the east and west shores, 
occurs one of the two sets of hieroglyphic markings to which I 
refer. The more typical examples of these are figured in Plate xIx. 
Lying off shore at a distance of a quarter to half a mile, and mak- 
ing with it a long sheltered channel, is a chain of islands trending 
east-and-west. On the south side of one of these islands, less than 
a mile to the west of the first locality, is to be seen the other set 
of inscriptions. The first set. occurs on the top of a low, glaciated, 
projecting point of rock which presents the characters of an ordi- 
nary roche moutonnée, The rock is a very soft, foliated, green, 
chloritic schist into which the characters are more or less deeply 
carved, The top of the rounded point is only a few feet above 
the high water mark of the lake, whose waters rise and fall in 
different seasons through a range of ten feet. The antiquity of 
the inscriptions is at once forced upon the observer upon a care- 
ful comparison of their weathering with that of the glacial 
grooves and striz, which are very distinctly seen upon the same 
rock surface. Both the ice grooves and carved inscriptions are, 
so far as the eye can judge, identical in extent of weathering, 
though there was doubtless a considerable lapse of time between 
the disappearance of the glaciers and the date of the carving. 
The ice grooves are not merely local scratches but part of the 
regular striation which characterizes the whole region. Both the 
striz and inscriptions present a marked contrast to some recent 
letters which passing traders or travelers, attracted by the novelty 
of the inscriptions, have cut into the rock, much in the same 
cei as that in which my Christianized Indian canoe-man pro- 
