sland, are
carved with the utmost elaborateness and in the most singular and
grotesque devices, from a soft blue clay-stone or slate. Their form is
in part determined by the material, which is only procurable in thin
slabs, so that the sculptures, wrought on both sides, present a sort
of double bas-relief. From this, singular and grotesque groups are
carved without any apparent reference to the final destination of the
whole as a pipe. The lower side is generally a straight line, and in
the specimens I have examined they measure from two or three to
fifteen inches long; so that in these the pipe-stem is included. A
small hollow is carved out of some protruding ornament to serve as the
bowl of the pipe, and from the further end a perforation is drilled to
connect with this. The only addition made to it when in use is the
insertion of a quill or straw as a mouth-piece. The Indians have both
war and peace pipes.

The War pipe is a true tomahawk of ordinary size with a perforated
handle the tobacco being placed in the receptacle above the hatchet
the handle serving as a pipe-stem and used for either pipe or
tomahawk. Many varieties of Indian Pipes have been found not only in
the Western and Southern mounds but in Mexico and Central America.
Fine specimens are found in Florida and some elaborately carved have
been unearthed in Virginia. Wilson says of the pipes used by the
Indians: "The pipe stem is one of the characteristics of modern race,
if not distinctive of the Northern tribes of Indians." In alluding to
the pipes more particularly he says:
"Specimens of another class of
clay pipes of a larger size, and with a tube of such length
as obviously to be designed for use without the addition of
a "pipe-stem,"
most of the ancient clay pipes that have been
discovered are stated to have the same form; and this, it may be
noted, bears so near a resemblance to that of the red clay pipe used
in modern Turkey, with the cherry-tree pipe stem, that it might be
supposed to have furnished the model.

[Illustration: A war pipe.]

The bowls of this class of ancient clay pipes are not of the miniature
proportions which induce a comparison between those of Canada and the
early examples found in Britain; neither do the stone pipe-heads of
the mound-builders suggest by the size of the bowl either the
self-denying economy of the ancient smoker, or his practice of the