Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/83

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MONG the several thousands of Indian relics gathered by the writer, in the immediate vicinity of Trenton, New Jersey, there has occurred one wholly different from all the others, and which bears some resemblance to the well-known Indian bark-letters, as figured by Schoolcraft and Catlin; but this inscribed stone is far more primitive than these. The specimen (as shown in the following diagram) is a slab of impure mica or micaceous slate, about an inch in thickness, seven inches in length, and four and three-fourths inches in



greatest width. The edges have been rudely beveled, and the specimen chipped into its present shape previous to the inscribing of the peculiar markings which characterize the relic.

These consist of a series of well-defined lines, one extending the entire length of the specimen, and dividing it into two nearly equal parts or surfaces. There are also three well-defined lines crossing