southern border of this county, 26 miles east of the Illinois River. Its location was on the brow of the hills overlooking Indian Creek to the south, and in a field cultivated for the last ten years, but which had been cleared from a dense growth of large forest trees. In this cache were thirty-five elegant implements entirely different in form, material, and finish, from those before described. Their position in the ground, was vertical and closely packed together, but otherwise without any peculiar arrangement. Axes and other objects made of copper, buried in the ground long ages ago by their rude owners, are now and then found, in many instances still encased in shreds of coarsely woven fabrics in which they had been carefully wrapped; the preservation of the matting or cloth being due to the salts of the decomposing metal. It is probable that the articles in all minor deposits, as the two here described, were also enveloped, when consigned to the safe keeping of the earth, in bark cloth or dressed skins, which, in the absence of antiseptic mineral oxides, have long since decayed without leaving a trace of their presence.
The thirty-five beautiful flints of this Indian Creek deposit are the perfection of ancient stone-chipping art. In form they are of the broad, or lilac-leaf pattern,
Fig. 4.
pointed more or less obtusely at one end and regularly semicircular at the other; the length but little exceeding the width; scarcely more than three-eighths of an inch thick in the center; they are smoothly chipped to an even sharp edge all around. They vary a little in size and somewhat in proportions, in the greater number the length exceeding the breadth by scarcely a third, while in a few, approaching the lanceolate type, the length is twice that of the width. The smallest of them is 3¼ inches long by 2⅜ inches broad at the base; and the largest one measures 5 inches in length and 3¼ inches
