ry short and transient age of copper. And the reason
for thus thinking is threefold. In the first place, bronze is an alloy
of tin and copper: and it seems natural to suppose that men would use
the simple metals in isolation to begin with, before they discovered
that they could harden and temper them by mixing the two together. In
the second place, copper occurs in the pure or native state (without
the trouble of smelting) in several countries, and was therefore a very
natural metal for early man to cast his inquiring glance upon. And in
the third place, weapons of unmixed copper, apparently of very antique
types, have been found in various parts of the world, both in Asia and
America. According to Mr. John Evans, the most learned historian of the
Bronze Age, the greatest copper 'find' of the eastern hemisphere was
that at Gungeria, in Central India; and the copper implements there
found consisted entirely of flat celts of a very early and almost
primitive pattern.

The copper weapons of America, however, have greater illustrative and
ethnological interest, because the noble red man, at the period when
Columbus first discovered him, and when he first discovered Columbus,
was still in the Stone Age of his very imperfect culture, or, to speak
more correctly, of extreme barbarism. The fact is, the Indians of Lake
Superior were only just beginning to employ copper, and were on the eve
of independently inaugurating a Bronze Age of their own, when the
intrusive white man came and spoiled the fun by the incontinent
introduction of iron, firearms, missionaries, whisky, and all the other
resources of civilization. On the shores of Lake Superior native copper
exists in abundance; and the intelligent Red Indian, finding this
handsome red stone in the cliffs by his side, was pretty sure to try
his hand at chipping a tomahawk out of the rare material. But, as soon
as he did so, Mr. Evans suggests, he would find to his surprise that it
yielded to his blows; in short, that he had got that singular
phenomenon, a malleable stone, to deal with. Hammering away at his new
invention, he must shortly have hammered it into a shapely axe. The new
process took his practical fancy at once: vistas of an untold wealth of
scalps floated gaily before his fevered brain; and he proceeded to
hammer himself various weapons and implements without delay. Amongst
others, he produced for himself very neat spear-heads, with sockets
adapted for the reception