It must excite our astonishment that any uncivilized people should be capable of producing such well-finished instruments of stone. The arrow-heads figured above are so admirably formed, that at the present day, with all the advantage of our modern tools of metal, we could scarcely equal, certainly could not surpass them; even into the handles of the knives very neatly executed ornaments are introduced; and yet it is supposed the use of metals was not understood. We can easily see and understand how the arrow-head or axe was first formed and afterwards polished; for indeed in several instances the very whetstones have been found near such stone implements; we are also able to prove that the greater part of the arrow-heads are formed of flints, which the makers knew how to split out of large masses of that stone. But the manner in which they contrived by means of a stone, so to split the flint, and that too, into such long and slender pieces, is still a mystery to us; for from those uncivilized nations which still make use of stone implements no satisfactory information has yet been obtained as to the mode in which they manufacture them. Some have been of opinion that the aborigines endeavoured to prevent the splitting of the stone by boiling it, or by keeping it under water while they fashioned it into the desired form. Others, on the contrary, have maintained, that such stone implements could not possibly have been so well formed by means of a stone, but must have been the work of those who were possessed of the necessary metal. Probably the truth lies between these two opinions, namely, in the supposition, that in the earliest times, when the use of metals was unknown, the stone implements were of the very simplest make, but that at a later period, when some had attained to the use of metals, they assumed a more perfect and handsome form. For it must be borne in mind that the use of instruments of stone unquestionably extended over a very long period.
Lastly, we must not lose sight of this fact, that the weapons and instruments of stone which are found in the north, in
