Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/90

, has blown away to the depth of several feet, exposing the foundations of an Indian village, interspersed with relics of every description, whose use can only be conjectured. The bodies of warriors of other centuries are dug up in our gardens, their soapstone pipes still unbroken,—the arrow and spear heads, released from their bondage, again lying loose in the dust by the side of the brave,—the deer-horns which were his trophy and his amulet, and the record in stone of the scalps he had taken. I am interested by the sight of these arrow-heads and spear-heads; which, though their shafts have long since crumbled into dust, are still pointed and sharp and undying as the Indian's revenge.

The Indians, who hid their possessions in holes, and affirmed that "God had cut them out for that express purpose," seem to have understood their philosophy better than the Royal Society of London, which, many years ago, gave an account of these holes in their Philosophical Transactions, and declared that "they seem plainly to be artificial."

There were many white basins found in the [42]