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underlying rock, and reveal its true character. After the fire had done
its work, it was found that copper veins, which had been worked, ran
through the rock in the gap, and that the great bank upon the south side
of the hill, which was supposed to be a terraced gravel bank, proved to
be a vast accumulation of "attle," or refuse stone, that had been taken
from the artificial gap and deposited there. The stones forming this
immense pile are generally small, and appear to have been broken up by
heating to facilitate their removal from the mine, and possibly may have
been again broken, with the hope of finding copper in them. In the midst
of the pile I noticed several stone hammers, or mauls, some of them
measuring twenty inches in girth around their grooves, and one I brought
away weighing thirty pounds.

When examining this locality, I was struck with a significant fact,
tending to show the long time that must have elapsed since the
abandonment of these mines. I noticed in many instances that the
artificial groove around the hammers was nearly obliterated upon the
upper side, while upon the lower side, less exposed to the abrading
agency of the atmosphere and rains, the groove presented a comparatively
fresh appearance, and even the slight markings made by the tool that cut
them were quite distinct. When I removed the overlying rock, and found a
grooved maul in a protected spot, the groove was generally as fresh as
though it had been made but a few months before. The compact nature of
the stone of which these hammers are made, and their ability to resist
the action of weather and moisture, prove conclusively that much time
has been required to disintegrate their surface so as to obliterate the
artificial work which has been expended upon them.

I feel unwilling to leave this subject without instituting an inquiry
relative to the time when these mines were wrought, and the people who
worked them. Many who have been taught to regard the present roving
tribes of Indians as instinctively wise in matters of medicine and
mining are ready to award to that race the credit of having worked these
mines; but, inasmuch as even a traditional knowledge of their existence
was unknown to the Indians at the time the Jesuit missionaries visited
that region in the sixteenth century, we incline to the opinion that an
other and distinct race worked them. I am unable to see why the
descendants of a people residing in the same country, and