Page:Anthropology.djvu/151

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150
MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY.

neighborhood, as to the changes effected upon the shore by the action of winds and the sea in storms, I could easily see that the sand around it had been swept away, leaving this spot a little above the head of the surrounding beach. In fact changes have been going on which render it impossible to ascertain how the ground lay in those old days. But the amount of splinters, hammered stones, &c., plainly shows what had been going on. These principally consist of agates and jaspers, which are not to be found in any rocks near, but are similar to those found at the present day in the trap rocks bordering on the Bay of Fundy, forming the northern mountains of King and Annapolis Counties, distant, in a direct line across the country, nearly sixty miles. A few are of the dioritic rocks, which are found intrusive in the southern mountains of the same counties, and some are of quartz, such as is found in the metamorphic rocks in the immediate neighborhood. An examination of these rocks shows the process which had been going on. Here is a stone at which the old arrow-maker had been hammering, with the view of splitting it longitudinally, but the result was several cracks crosswise, and it was thrown away. Here is a disk-like stone, around the edge of which he had been hammering, but, instead of splitting through the center, it broke away in fragments to the side. And then there are flakes of all sizes and thickness. A few complete arrow-heads have been found, and a much larger number of imperfect ones. These are all small, from 1⅜ to 2 inches in length, but are very finely executed. Stones are also picked up which bear on their edges the evidence of having been used as hammers. A few stone chisels or axes have also been found, but it is evident that the work carried on was mainly of forming arrow-heads, for which they^brought from the Bay of Fundy the finer stones mentioned. Small pieces of copper are also found. They consist sometimes of small nuggets seemingly in their natural state, sometimes they are flattened out by hammering, and they are also formed into small knives or piercers.

There were portages, where they carried their canoes from one lake or stream to another, or across a headland. These were mere paths through the forests, and are now either grown up with wood or have been plowed up.

I have some small copper knives and small specimens of copper, the latter from Lunenburg County. It has commonly been supposed that the Micmacs were entirely ignorant of the use of metals till the arrival of Europeans. These show that they had at least got to the length of making use of the small specimens of native copper found in the trap rocks of the Bay of Fundy. I have also some bone spear-heads, a good deal decayed, from some cemetery; also, a pipe from the same place. It is made out of a very hard granitic rock, and Dr. Dawson, of McGill College, Montreal, our highest authority on the geology of these regions, says that he knows no rock of the same kind nearer than Bay Chaleur,