shore, where the old excavations are surrounded by broken pieces of vein-stone, with stone mauls rudely formed from natural boulders. The extensive area over which such works have thus been traced, the evidences of their prolonged working, and of their still longer abandonment, all combine to force upon the mind convictions of their remote antiquity. At Ontonagon river I met with Captain Peck, a settler whose long residence in the country has afforded him many opportunities of noting the evidences of its ancient occupation. Repeated discoveries had led him to infer the great antiquity of the works; and he specially referred to one disclosure of ancient mining operations near the forks of the Ontonagon river, where, at a depth of upwards of twenty-five feet, stone mauls and other tools were found in contact with a copper vein; in the soil above these lay the trunk of a large cedar, and over all grew a hemlock-tree, with its roots spread entirely above the fallen cedar, in the accumulated soil with which the trench was filled, and indicating a growth of not less than three centuries. But the buried cedar, which in favourable circumstances is far more durable than the oak, represents another and longer succession of centuries, subsequent to that protracted period during which the deserted trench was slowly filled up with accumulations of many winters. In another excavation a bed of clay had been formed above the ancient flooring to the depth of a foot. On this lay the skeleton of a deer which had stumbled in and perished there; and over it clay, leaves, sand, and gravel had accumulated to a depth of nineteen feet. Not only are such indications frequent throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula, and to the westward and southward of Ontonagon; but on Isle Royale the abandoned mines disclose still stronger evidence of their great antiquity. The United States Geologists remark: “Mr. E. G. Shaw pointed out to us similar evidences of mining on Isle Royale, which can be traced lengthways for the distance of a mile. On opening one of these pits, which had become filled up, he found the mine had been worked through the solid rock, to the depth of nine feet, the walls being perfectly smooth. At the bottom he found a vein of native copper eighteen inches thick, including a sheet of pure copper lying against the foot-wall.” Stone hammers and wedges lay in great abundance at the bottom of the trenches, but no metallic implements were found: a proof perhaps that the mines of Isle Royale continued to be wrought after their workers had been hastily compelled to abandon those on the mainland. Mr. Shaw adopted the conclusion, from the appearance of the wall-rocks, the multitude of stone implements, and the material removed, that the labour of excavating the rock must have been performed solely with such instruments, with the aid, perhaps, of fire. But the appearance of the vein, and the extent of the workings, furnished