returned to San Francisco, in February, 1855, with specimens of the ore, and the company was incorporated, under the title of the "Arizona Mining Company;" hence, curiously enough, the endeavours of the association to occupy and open old silver mines, were terminated by the unexpected discovery and possession of a rich copper

mine.

In the midst of mountain ridges, principally of porphyry, which rise abruptly from plains dotted here and there with grass, lies the Arizona mine. The green colour of the ore, outcropping on the dark red rock, is perceptible at the distance of a mile; numerous specimens of the cactus--one kind of which, the cereus giganteus, the savarre of the Mexicans, frequently attains the height of forty feet,-together with mezquit and iron wood form the principal vegetable growth. Some of the mountains bear evidence of tremendous igneous action, whilst others are void of all traces of plutonic force. The soil is light and porous, with a superabundance of disintegrated granite. Altogether the scene is lonely and desolate in the extreme; though the perpetual but scanty vegetation prevents it from merit ing the appellation of a desert. Water is obtained from natural reservoirs found in the dark mountain recesses, supplied by the rains, which occur with some regularity during the months of July, August, December, January, and February.

The ores extracted are the gray, black and red oxide, the latter richly impregated with virgin copper. Persons conversant with copper mining admit the ore to be the richest, in the average, of any yet discovered. So far as examined the veins increase in richness and quantity as they remove from the surface. For instance, a vein of red oxide four inches wide at the surface, had, at the depth of fifty feet, reached the thickness of four feet, and became almost exclusively pure copper which lay in a soft rock and was easily worked.

Dr. Webster, a resident of San Francisco, largely interested in the mine, and to whose kind services I am indebted for specimens of the ore, informed me of the existence of a peculiar feature in its vicinity; a high hill known as the iron mountain, but which, more accurate observation and analyzis has since proved to be composed of the black oxide of copper, existing in immense quantities.

The knowledge of the Arizona mine was confined to a few Papago Indians, previous to 1851. In the commencement of that year some Mexicans sent a party of seven labourers to work it; six of whom were surprised and murdered by the Apache Indians. Subsequently several foreigners endeavoured to form companies and settle in its

vicinity, but obstacles, incidental to its situation, obliged them to desist. Now, however, that the energetic American has acquired a knowledge of these spots, so great in mineral wealth, and the accents. of the English language have been heard in the mountain gorges, and on the plains, amid which such mineral wealth abounds, it seems natural to anticipate that the war whoop of the savage will die away. The Indian will disappear here as elsewhere, after witnessing in vain the advantages of civilization and combined industry, and thus ere long this formidable impediment will cease to baffle the exertions of science and commerce, in turning to account so rich a deposit of mineral wealth.

NARCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLD.

BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO.

(Continued from p. 264.)

Amid the endless variety which

characterises the form of the

width, with the From one of the bowl, is drilled a

ancient Mound Builders' pipes, one general type is traceable through the whole. "They are always carved from a single piece, and consist of a flat curved base, of variable length and bowl rising from the centre of the convex side, ends, and communicating with the hollow of the small hole, which answers the purpose of a tube; the corresponding opposite division being left for the manifest purpose of holding the implement to the mouth." The authors of the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," express their conviction, derived from the inspection of-hundreds of specimens which have come under their notice, during their explorations of the ancient mounds, that the instrument is complete as found, and was used without any such tube as is almost invariably employed by the modern Indian, and also by the modern perfume-loving oriental when he fills his chibouk with the odorous shiraz or mild latakia. The modern pipe-head of each has a large aperture for the insertion of the tube, whereas in

the ancient examples referred to, the perforation is about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and the mouth-piece flattened, and adapted to the lips, so that we can scarcely doubt the mouth was applied directly to the implement, without the addition of any tube of wood or metal. It is otherwise with examples of pipe-heads carved out the beautiful red pipe stone, the most favourite material for the pipe sculpture of the modern Indian. It would seem, therefore, that the pipe-tube is one of the characteristics of the modern race; if not distinctive of the northern tribes, from the Toltecan and other essentially diverse ancient people of Central and Southern

America.

The use of tobacco, from the earliest eras of which we can recover a glimpse, pertained to both; but the pipe-head would appear to be the emblem of the one, while the pipe-stem gives character to the singular rites and superstitions of the other. The incremated. pipe-heads of the ancient mound builders illustrate the sacred usages of the one; while the skill with which the Indian medicine-man decorates the stem of his medicine-pipe, and the awe and reverence with which-as will be presently shown,-the whole tribe regard it, abundantly prove the virtues ascribed to that implement of the Indian medicine man's sacred art. May it not be, that in the sacred associations connected with the pipe by the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley, we have the indications of contact between the migrating race of Southern and Central America, among whom no superstitious pipe usages are traceable, and the tribes of the north where such superstitions are most intimately interwoven with all their sacred mysteries?

In one, though only in one respect, a singular class of clay pipes, which has come under my notice, agrees with the ancient examples, and would seem thereby still further to narrow the area, or the era of the pipe-stem. During the summer of 1855, I made an excursion in company with the Rev. George Bell, to some parts of County Norfolk, Canada West, within a few miles of Lake Erie, for the purpose of exploring certain traces of the former natives of the locality. We found at various places along the margins of the smaller streams, and on the sloping banks of the creeks, spots where our excavations were rewarded by discovering relics of the rude arts of the Aborigines. These included awls or bodkins, and large needles, made of bone,* * Implements of bone, precisely corresponding to some of these, are figured and described by Messrs. Squier and Davis, (page 220,) among the disclosures of the ancient mounds. Such implements, however, have pertained to the rude arts of primitive races in all ages, and where found with other samples of the same pottery in the States, have been supposed to be the implements for working the ornamental patterns on the soft clay.

several stone implements, and a considerable quantity of pottery. The specimens of rude native fictile ware considerably interested me, on account of the close resemblance they frequently bore, not only in material, but in ornamentation, to the ancient pottery of the British barrow .

The potters' art appears to have been practised to a great extent, and with considerable skill, by the ancient races of this continent t; nor was it unknown to the Red Indians at the period when their arts and customs were first brought under the notice of Europeans. Adair says of the Choctaws and Natchez, that "they made a prodigious number of vessels of pottery, of such variety of forms as would be tedious to describe, and impossible to name;" and DeSoto describes the fine earthware of the latter tribe, in the seventeenth century, as of considerable variety of composition and much elegance, of shape, so as to appear to him little inferior to that of Portugal. The specimens found by me in County Norfolk, and elsewhere in Canada, are heavy and coarse, both in material and workmanship, and neither these nor the objects now to be described, admit of any comparison, in relation to artistic design or workmanship, with those relics of the Mound Builders' arts, or the more recent productions of Indian skill which suggest a resemblance to them.

Accompanying the rude fictile ware, spoken of, were also discovered several pipe-heads, made of burnt clay, and in some examples ornamented, like the pottery, with rude chevron patterns, and lines of dot-work, impressed on the material while soft. But what particularly struck me in these, and also in others of the same type, including several specimens found under the root of a large tree, at the Mohawk reserve on the Grand River, and presented to me by the Indian Chief and Missionary, the late Peter Jones, (Kahkewaquonaby,) was the extreme smallness of the bowls, internally, and the obvious completeness of most of such examples as were perfect, without any separate stem or mouth piece; while if others received any addition, it must have been a small quill, or straw. They at once recalled to my mind the diminutive Scottish "Elfin Pipes," and on comparing them with some of these in my possesion, I find that in the smallest of the Indian pipes the capacity of the bowl is even less than the least of those which, from their miniature proportions have been long popularly assigned to the use of the Scottish Elves. Both the pipes and the accompanying pottery totally differ, as Mr. Kane assures me, from any of the manufactures which have come under his notice among the tribes of the North West, with whom, indeed, the potter's art appears to be wholly unknown.

The pottery thus found along with these diminutive Indian clay pipes, is obviously therefore a relic of former centuries, though exhibiting no such evidence as would necessarily suggest a remote antiquity. Similar examples found to the south of the Great Lakes, are thus described by Mr. Squier, in his Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York: "Upon the site of every Indian town, as also within all the ancient enclosures, fragments of pottery occur in great abundance. It is rare, however, that any entire vessels are recovered. Those which have been found, are for the most part gourdshaped, with round bottoms, and having little protuberances near the rim, or oftener a deep groove, whereby they could be suspended. A few cases have been known in which this form was modified, and the bottoms made sufficiently flat to sustain the vessel in an upright position. Fragments found in Jefferson County seem to indicate that occasionally the vessels were moulded in forms nearly square, but with rounded angles. The usual size was from one to four quarts; but some must have contained not less than twelve or fourteen quarts. In general there was no attempt at ornament; but sometimes the exteriors of the pots and vases were elaborately, if not tastefully ornamented with dots and lines, which seem to have been formed in a very rude manner with a pointed stick or sharpened bone. Bones which appear to have been adapted to this purpose are often found. After the commencement of European intercourse, kettles and vessels of iron, copper, brass, and tin, quickly superseded the productions of the primitive potter, whose art at once fell into disuse."*

In an able summary of the "Archæology of the United States,' embodying a resumé of all that has been previously done, Mr. Samuel F. Haven remarks: "In order to estimate correctly the degree of skill in handicrafts possessed by the people who were found in occupation of the soil, we must go back to a time antecedent to the decline in all domestic arts which resulted immediately from intercourse with the whites. So soon as more effective implements, more serviceable and durable utensils, and finer ornaments, could be obtained in exchange for the products of the chase, their own laborious and imperfect manufactures were abandoned."+ But just as this reasoning must unquestionably prove in many cases, it fails of application in relation to the absence of the potter's art among the Indians of the North West, for the substitutes found for it are of native manufacture, and present a much greater dissimilarity to the pro

*Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. Page 75. + Smithsonian Contributions. Vol. VIII. Page 155.