altar appear to have been on an island in Rock River in prehistoric times; but the north channel is filled up, and the ancient island, like its inhabitants, has long since ceased to exist. Under this altar was

found the decomposed skeletons of five adult persons. They were buried with heads together at the centre, and feet at the circumference, and equidistant, like the spokes of a carriage wheel. All were buried supine. One of the skulls was pierced with a small sharp arrowpoint, —a red chert point, such as are quite common in this locality. These bones were very brittle; and some were of a purplish color, like those described in Orflia's "Exhumations Juridiques" (vol. i. p. 350). Adjoining this altar on the west was found a large quantity of human bones, the greatest number of persons I have ever found buried in one place. The bodies had been thrown into a deep pit in a promiscuous manner. In one burial mound of this group I found fragments of burned rock, and two stone knives that had been reddened by fire, also implements made of the prongs of antlers of deer, and a few fragments of rude pottery.

Altars Numbers Three and Four were found about four rods apart, northwest and southeast, in the centre of a broad valley on Rock Creek, one of the tributaries of Rock River. They were alike in all respects. Both were circular in form, about six feet in diameter, and composed of three layers of flat limestones. Both were also covered by a sedimentary deposit of clay. One was accidentally found by the point of a subsoil plough turning up a piece of burned rock. The other was found by probing the soil with a sharp iron rod. They had been built on the ancient surface of the valley, and had been covered by clay washed down from the hills. The stone work of both was crumbled almost to powder by the action of heat. The subsoil about these altars was filled with charcoal; but no bones were found. Only one implement was found, a large stone axe, a few feet north of the

northwest altar.

In this paper I have excluded ancient "fireplaces," where it appeared that they were used for domestic purposes; and also mounds without stone structures, that appear to have been used for beacon-lights. There is a marked difference in the structures. Fireplaces are found at the foot of some sheltering bluff or hillside. They were usually, built into the hillside, and were concave or cup-shaped in form; as deep as they were broad. Fire might be buried in one of the fireplaces, and the embers wonld remain many days. They appear to be as old as the altars; for they are buried in the soil, and above

one of them was the decayed stump of a white-oak about three feet in diameter. Beacon mounds are somewhat irregular-shaped, never more than three in a group, and situated on the highest summits. The clay of which they are composed is mingled with ashes; but human remains are not found in them. I have never found a fireplace or a beacon mound near a group of burial mounds.

в

ANTIQUITIES IN THE TOWN OF NEW HAVEN, VERMONT. By JOHN MCNAB CURRIER of Castleton, Vermont.

IN September, 1875, a Mr. Prime of Bristol, Vt., showed me a fragment of an arrow-head, which he said he found a few days previously on some earth entangled among the roots of a tree that had been blown down by the wind, in the eastern part of the town of New Haven, Vt. The fragment was rudely chipped; and the material was a bluish quartzite, such as a large proportion of the arrow-heads and spearpoints are made from in this section of Vermont. I had some curiosity to examine this locality for myself. On reaching the spot I found a hemlock tree blown down, without breaking or tearing many of the roots. The soil among the roots was fully eight inches thick, and remained undisturbed. Below the soil a layer of clay was also taken up at the same time undisturbed, from three to six inches thick. In this layer of clay Mr. Prime said he found the fragment of arrow-head. On examination I found many flint flakes of similar material to the fragment, and unmistakably of human workmanship. They seemed to be mingled with the clay immediately underlying the soil, to the depth of four or more inches. Many flakes also were found on the ground where the tree had stood.

I examined the soil on the roots of the tree with great care for flakes and other stone implements, but nothing of the kind could be found until the clay was reached. On cutting into the tree near its roots, I counted between ninety and one hundred annual rings. Near by were standing other trees of greater diameters; also there were several old decayed stumps in the immediate vicinity, fully three feet in diameter. The ground on this spot had never been ploughed, and I should judge that the forests had never been entirely cleared off. It was on a slightly elevated ridge of clay, about six rods wide, sloping

to the east and west into marshy ground, unfavorable for cultivation. This locality is about two miles west of the Green Mountain range, and one half mile west of the New Haven River. The face of the country is very uneven, being broken up into small plains, valleys, and ridges. This spot slopes gently northward and eastward, and is not well adapted for retaining upon its surface the decaying vegetation that would make up its soil. This clay ridge is undoubtedly of glacial formation.

I regard this as positive evidence of a much earlier occupation of the Champlain Valley than is commonly supposed. Certainly the formation of a deep layer of soil was subsequent to the dropping of those flint flakes.

ON

THE ALABASTER QUARRIES, FLINT MINES, AND OTHER ANTIQUITIES OF WYANDOT CAVE. By HORACE C. HOVEY, of Fair Haven, Conn.

RELICS from American caverns have hitherto been found chiefly in dry chambers, where a pure atmosphere and a nitrous earth have kept them from decay. The most interesting examples of this antiseptic preservation are the textile fabrics and desiccated human bodies discovered in various caves in Kentucky. Stalagmitic deposits, which in France and England have yielded valuable archæological treasures, have here been but imperfectly explored. The only thorough method is that of cutting vertical slices through the cave-floor down to the solid rock, subjecting each barrow load to inspection. An approach to this was in the extensive excavations made by miners for saltpetre, who, during the war of 1812, worked over many acres in Mammoth and Wyandot Caves. Their object being to obtain materials for gunpowder, rather than scientific information, they have only left us legends of skeletons and other remains long ago scattered and lost. They were rude frontiersmen; and it has been customary to lay to their charge spoliations, some of which, as I am convinced, are of an older date. But, before giving the grounds of this opinion, it will be well to state the more general evidences of Indian preoccupancy, especially of Wyandot Cave, the antiquities of which it is the main design of this paper to describe.

Wyandot Cave is in Crawford County, Indiana, near the Ohio River; and from the first has been in the possession of the Rothrock

family, whose aid I have had in making the researches now to be recorded. For many years after its discovery its entire length was thought to be only about two miles; aud, aside from its valuable beds of nitre and Epsom salts, it attracted little public attention; but now its ramifications are estimated at a total length of twenty-three miles. The portion called by way of distinction the "New Cave" was discovered in 1850, by enlarging a small opening noticed among loose fragments of rock. Beneath these a scuttle appeared, that had at some former time been used, and afterwards closed up. The first white persons who passed through this found a well-beaten path leading inward amid smoke-stained walls. Bits of hickory bark with charred ends were abundant. Numerous poles were found in various places, that may have served a double purpose, as alpenstocks, and as weapons against wild beasts. Many tooth-prints on them are still to be seen. These poles were all saplings, from five to eight feet long, having no marks of any edge-tool, but seeming to have been pulled up by the roots, and the branches then twisted off. None of them were hickory or oak; but some kind of soft wood, such as poplar, pawpaw, or sassafras. I saw all these things on the occasion of my first visit, in 1854. An orifice known as the " Auger-hole" had at that time just been artificially enlarged from a diameter of six inches to that of twenty-one inches; barely admitting us, through a group. of bulky stalactites, to a large area of unexplored territory beyond. Centuries must have elapsed since that narrow aperture had been so closed as to be impassable; yet there, in the nitrous earth, soft as a newly raked garden bed, were the moccasin tracks of an aboriginal party that once searched these dim avenues, going up on one side and returning down the other. The footprints, as I noticed, were parallel to each other, with heel and toe in line, instead of with the toes turned outward, a fact confirming our opinion that they were left by Indians. I regret to say that these vestiges are now entirely obliterated by the heedless tracks of more recent visitors.

There are abundant deposits of clay in Wyandot Cave, especially of red and yellow ochre, very free from grit and earthy impurities. In its moist condition it is plastic; and when dry may be scraped, and then burnished, simply by friction with the palm. Reduced to dust, it makes an excellent pigment. As the Indian paths ran by these beds, it may be inferred that they obtained supplies of this useful material. While examining one of the heaviest clay beds in the south arm, two years or more ago, a strong current of air was observed

through a crevice above it. Heeding this indication, the guide dug a trench through the indurated clay. Then, crawling on our faces for nearly twenty yards, we entered a room, circular in form, forty feet in diameter and eight feet high, where it is certain that no white man had ever been before. Wolf tracks were numerous, which we traced to a spot where the animals had been wont to lie down. Hence we called the chamber "the Wolf's Lair." Quantities of charred bark lay strewed about the floor. Two entire torches, the ends only having been burnt, projected from a crevice overhead. Who could conjecture when those extinct flambeaux had last been touched by human hand? Reverently examining them, we replaced them where they had been. discovered. The original entrance to the Wolf's Lair was not through the clay-bank pierced by us, but through a passage at the further end of the apartment, as was indicated by the curved strata bending to the floor; as if the rocks, breaking by their own weight, had fallen in. The place can hardly be more than twelve hundred feet from the mouth of the cave, and anciently was of easy access and frequent resort, though now reached only by a détour of perhaps a mile and a

half.

ALABASTER QUARRIES.

The chief sin laid to the charge of the saltpetre miners of 1812 was an alleged attempt by them to fell a a huge stalacto-stalagmitic column, known as the "Pillar of the Constitution," standing at the end of the Old Cave, and two miles from its entrance. I found, on subsequently exploring the New Cave, in localities which the saltpetre miners never saw, other columns cut into precisely as this had been. This exonerates these pioneers from vandalism, and stimulates further inquiry as to the cause of such ancient excavations.

On measuring the Pillar of the Constitution, it was found to be about forty feet high, seventy-five feet in girth, and its base to be three hundred feet in circumference. Its material is a hard, white, striated, translucent mineral, slowly deposited by the evaporation of water freighted with carbonate of lime. This has from classic days been known as alabaster, and now is called "Oriental alabaster," to distinguish it from the more common and softer sort, composed of the sulphate of lime. The pillar is not merely crusted with this beautiful mineral, but is solid and homogeneous. Its immense weight has at some remote period caused the subjacent rocks to settle, thus opening cracks in the spreading, stalagmitic base, many yards long, and varying in width from an inch to a foot. Some are healed over; others remain open.