50 ABORIGINAL MONUMENTS
man haye ever been the same, and have always suggested like forms to his implements, and similar modes of using them. The polished instrument with which the pioneer of civilization prostrates the forest, has its type in the stone axe of the Indian which his plough the next day exposes to his curious gaze. In the barrows of Denmark and Sibe- ria, in the tumuli on the plains of Marathon, and even under the shadow of the pyramids themselves, the explorer finds relics, almost identical with those disclosed from the mounds, and closely resembling each other in material, form, and workmanship. We have consequently little whereby to distinguish the remains of the mound-builders, so far as their mere implements of stone are concerned, except the position in which they are found, and the not entirely imaginary superiority of their workmanship, from those of the succeeding races. We have, however, in the different varieties of stone of which they are composed, the evidences of a communication more extended than we are justified in ascribing to the more recent tribes. For in- stance, we find knives and lance-heads of obsidian (the itzli of the Mexicans and the gallinazo stone of the Peru- vians), a volcanic product, the nearest native locality of which, so far as we know, is Central Mexico, the ancient inhabitants of which country applied it to the very purposes for which it was used by the race of the mounds.
Arrow and lance heads and cutting instruments of the numerous varieties of quartz, embracing every shade of color and degree of transparency, from the dull blue of the ordinary hornstone to the brilliant opalescence of the chal- cedonic varieties, are frequent in the mounds. Some are worked with exquisite skill from pure, limpid crystals of quartz, others from crystals of mangnesian garnet, and others still, as before observed, from obsidian. It is a singular fact, however, that none of these, nor indeed any traces of weapons, have been discovered in the “sepulchral mounds:” most of the remains found with the skeletons
