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42 across the widest part. Six of them are made of mottled red and brown glossy jasper, and the remaining twenty-six of ordinary white flint, shading in texture from the compact translucent glassy, to the opaque milk-white varieties. In one of the neatest and most perfectly proportioned specimens the natural conchoidal fracture of the stone from which it was struck gives one side its exact contour without aid of any chipping. In several are embedded fragments of fossil crinoidal stems around which the siliceous atoms in solution or suspension first collected and solidified to form the rock; and in six there remain near the edges small patches of the buff, rind-like calcareo-siliceous outer coating of the flint-nodules from which they were split, not entirely removed by the process of manufacturing. The rounded edge of each is smooth and worn, and the sides of some are gapped, testifying to long and hard usage before their interment, and indicating conclusively that the broad circular edge of the tool was the one chiefly used. There is no reason to believe that these beautiful objects were used as weapons in any manner. Their poi n ted ends may have been inserted in handles of some description for convenience of manipulating them; but their crescent edges, so similar to the half-moon knives of modern curriers and other leather workers, forcibly suggest their use as skin-dressers. They are too fragile to have been serviceable in the scraping work of canoe-making, or in shaping any hard- wood or bone instruments; and could not have so well preserved their flue edges as hand-used agricultural implements, or clay-diggers for pottery making. Hence, I conclude that they were the vade mecum of the squaws, and their chief reliance in all their work requiring the aid of mechanical appliances.

 

Cass County fits into the angle formed by the confluence of the Sangamon, flowing from the east, with the Illinois River in its course to the Mississippi, a little west of the center of the State. It is not in the u forks" of the two rivers, but the one sweeps its entire northern border while the other bounds its limits on the west. Its topography is identical in main features with the most part of the great undulating prairie system of the State; and may be briefly described as a scope of open rolling land, studded with groves and furrowed with creeks and rivulets, and fringed all along its northern and western portions with ranges of bluffs which form the boundaries of the river valleys. Extending from the foot of these ranges of bluffs to the rivers lie the rich alluvial "bottoms" varying in width from 2 to 7 miles. Viewed from below the bluffs rise to the height of 150 feet in picturesque grass-covered peaks and ridges separated from each other by deep 