Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/256

 in each specimen, but Fig. 11 shows a typical example, the heavier line giving the outline of the bore. This tube is eight inches and a half long, nearly an inch and a half in diameter at the largest part, and about an inch at the smallest. The material—and this is the same in all—is a drab talcose slate. The figure is one third full size. Other tubes have been previously figured and described by the writer in the Portland volume of Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The tubes are all very carefully shaped and well finished. The bore was probably first drilled with a reed and sand, and then at the large end worked out by means of some pointed tool, for circular striæ are plainly seen at the small end, while at the other only longitudinal marks occur. Whatever may have been the design of other tubes, it seems by far most probable that those found here were used as pipes, for they are in all essential respects like those mentioned above, now and anciently in use on the Pacific coast, as may be seen by reference to the seventh volume



of the Wheeler Survey, Plates 7 and 8, and also to Volume III of the Contributions to North American Ethnology.

In Fig. 13 there is shown a pipe which may be considered as representing the transition from stone to modern forms; for, although it was dug in a locality that has yielded more of our stone pipes than any other, it is made of pewter. It does not appear as if cast in a mold, but rather as if worked out of a solid block in the same manner that a stone pipe would be made. The surface is covered with tool-marks, and the bowl bears inside both vertical and circular striæ. Of course, the material of which this specimen is made arouses suspicion that it was the work of a white man; but its appearance, as well as the circumstances in which it was found, all indicate that it is of Indian origin. The material was of course obtained from Europeans.

A people who had attained to such skill in working clay into jars as had the aborigines of the Champlain Valley would undoubtedly make many of their common pipes of this material.