Prehistoric Man, Researches Into the Origin of Civilisation

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ...and to whom the agency of gunpowder was unknown. At the Cliff Mine are preserved some curious specimens of ancient copper tools of the native metallurgists, found in its vicinity, but it is to the westward of the Keweenaw Peninsula that the most remarkable and extensive traces of the aboriginal miners' operations are seen. The copper-bearing trap rock, after crossing the Keweenaw Lake, is traced onward in a south-westerly direction till it crosses the Qntonagon river about twelve miles from its mouth; and at an elevation of upwards of three hundred feet above the lake. At this place the edges of the copper veins appear to crop out in various places, exposing the metal in irregular patches over a considerable extent of country. Here, in the neighbourhood of the Minnesota Mine, the richest of all the modern works in the district of Ontonagon, are traces of ancient mining operations, consisting of extensive trenches, which prove that the works must have been carried on for a long period and by considerable numbers. These excavations are partially rilled up, and so overgrown during the long interval between their first excavation and their observation by recent explorers, that they would scarcely attract the attention of a traveller unprepared to find such evidences of former industry and art. Nevertheless some of them measure from eighteen to thirty feet in depth, and in one of them a detached mass of native copper, weighing upwards of six tons, was found resting on an artificial cradle of black oak, partially preserved by immersion in the water with which the trenches had been filled in the first long era after their abandonment. Various implements and tools of the same metal also lay in the deserted trench, where this huge mass had been...