shed their claims by leaving their tools upon the land or in the
pits where they were digging for gold.

In addition to the stone implements, copper chisels, wedges, or "gads,"
are often found in the abandoned mines; and in the vicinity, as well as
in places more remote, other copper relics are found, consisting of
knives, spear-points, and rings, like the bracelets of the present day.
In a collection at the Douglas House, in Houghton, Portage Lake, are
ornaments of this kind, and also some spear-heads, nicely wrought and
similar in shape and size to the blade of a spontoon. But I have never
seen a copper relic that had the appearance of having been melted. They
invariably appear to have been cut and hammered into shape from a mass
of native copper.

Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, Ohio, who has examined these
"ancient diggings," has several interesting relics, some of which he has
figured and described in the thirteenth volume of the "Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge." In the Vermont State Cabinet is a
spear-head of native copper, about six inches long, which was found in
Williston, Vermont, in 1843.

It may be proper here to remark, that the copper in these relics is
tougher than that which has been fused, and so is the native copper of
Lake Superior; and occasionally in these copper relics blotches and
grains of native silver are found. These circumstances serve to
establish the fact, that the material of which the implements were made
was obtained at Lake Superior; for there, and nowhere else in America,
is native silver found in grains, and sometimes in considerable masses,
imbedded in a matrix of native copper. I well remember, when a boy,
reading an article relating to the "Lost Arts," in which the fact was
stated, that a piece of metal consisting of pure copper and silver had
been found in Hamilton County, Ohio, and that a copper knife had been
found in one of the ancient mounds at Marietta, which had distinct
blotches of pure silver in it. The writer of the article claimed that
the people who manufactured that knife were in the possession of an art,
now lost, by which copper and silver could be melted and
indiscriminately mixed, but upon cooling would separate and remain
distinct and pure, instead of forming an alloy. The discovery of native
copper and silver similarly associated in the Lake Superior mines has
not only destroyed this theory, but has established beyond a doubt the
locality whe