But by far the most attractive class of fabrics which the commerce of Europe supplied in exchange for their rich furs and peltries, was arm-bands, wrist-bands, ear-rings, gorgets, and other ornaments, both for the person and dress, of silver. This metal was esteemed, as it is at this day, above all others. Its color and purity led them to regard it as pre-eminently _the_ noble metal, and its introduction at once superceded the cherished Nabikoagun Antique, and other forms of medals and gorgets made from compact sea-shells. In this manner the introduction of European arts, one after another, speedily overturned and supplanted the ancient Indian arts, and transferred them, at the end of but a few generations, from useful objects to the class of antiquities. It is unnecessary to pursue the subject to the department of clothing, in which woollens, cottons, linens and ribbons, took the place of the dressed skins of animals and birds, and the inner barks of trees, &c. Such objects are no part of the antiquities to be studied here. They are wholly perishable, and if any thing is to be gleaned from their study in the unburied cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, where stone and marble offered objects of temporary resistance to currents of flowing lava, they offer no facts to guide the pen of the antiquarian here. The European and the Indian fabrics of the 16th century have alike submitted to the inevitable laws of decomposition; but were it otherwise, could we disinter from the Indian graves the first duffils, strouds, osnaburgs, and blankets, that were given to the race, they would only prove that the latter quickly laid aside the inferior when they could get the superior article. It would prove that guns and gunpowder, brass kettles and iron axes, had caused the manufacture of stone darts and clay kettles to be thrown aside and forgotten, and in like manner the labors of the spindle and loom had given the Indian, even before Columbus descended to his grave, a new wardrobe. To denote what the Indian arts were, at the beginning of the 16th century, we must resort to their tombs, mounds, and general cemeteries. The melancholy tale that is told from the dust and bones of these sacred repositories is to be our teacher and schoolmaster. Its whispers are low and almost inaudible. There are pauses and lapses which it is difficult to make out. It requires great care—nice attention—examination and re-examination. We must not hastily compose the thread of the narrative. We must doubt and reject where doubt and rejection are proper. We must discriminate the various epochs of art from the objects disinterred. If objects of various ages lie in the same cemeteries we must not confound them. Carefully to labor, patiently to study, cautiously to conclude, is the province of the antiquarian; and if, after all, he has but little to offer, it is, perhaps, because there is but little to glean. NOTE.