umps of copper that they
could easily manage and fashion by hammering. They had not discovered
the art of melting. When they found an unusually large piece, they broke
off what they could by vigorous hammering. In one case they found a mass
weighing about six tons of pure copper. They made an attempt to master
this piece. By means of wedges they had got it upon a cob-work of round
logs or skids, six or eight inches in diameter, but the mass was finally
abandoned for some unknown reason after breaking off such pieces as
they could until the upper surface was smooth. This mass rested on the
framework of logs while the years came and went, until, after the lapse
of unknown time, the white men once more opened the old mine.

On the rubbish in front of this mine was standing the stump of a pine
tree ten feet in circumference. These ancient mines are found not only
on the main-land, but on the islands off the coast as well. The only
helps they seem to have employed was fire, traces of which are found
everywhere, and stone mauls and axes. The mauls consist of oblong
water-worn bowlders of hard tough rock, nature having done every thing
in fashioning them except to form the groove, which was chiseled out
around the middle. Some copper implements were also found.

Col. Whittlesey, from whose writings we have drawn the foregoing,
concludes that these mines were worked by the Mound Builders. As he
finds no traces of graves or houses, or other evidence of a protracted
stay, he thinks they were worked only through the Summer season of the
year by bands of workmen from the south.

As to what caused the abandonment of the works we do not know. It might
have been an impulse of their race hurrying them on to some distant
migration; or, more probably, pressed by foes from without, they were
compelled to abandon their ancient homes. Whatever the cause was, nature
resumed her sway. Forest trees crept up to and grew around the mouths
of the deserted mines. Col. Whittlesey concludes from the group of trees
growing on the top of the rubbish heap that at least five hundred years
passed away before the white man came from the south to resume the work
of his ancient predecessor.<90>

It is not, however, proven that the Mound Builders were the sole workers
of these ancient mines. It is known that the Indians mined for flint.
Some of the excavations for this purpose, in what is known as Flint
Ridge, in Muskingum County, Ohio, are as marked as t