The baskets our neighboring Indians make are all made of a very fine sort of bullrushes, and sometimes of silk grass, which they work with figures of beasts, birds, fishes, &c. A great way up in the country, both baskets and mats are made of the split reeds, which are only the outward shining part of the cane. Of these I have seen mats, baskets, and dressing boxes, very artificially done.[6] James Adair, although, a comparatively recent writer, gives such definite and valuable information regarding the handiwork of the Southern Indians that the following extracts may well be made. Speaking of the Cherokees, he remarks: They make the handsomest clothes baskets, I ever saw, considering their materials. They divide large swamp canes, into long, thin, narrow splinters, which they dye of several colours, and manage the workmanship so well, that both the inside and outside are covered with a beautiful variety of pleasing figures; and, though for the space of two inches below the upper edge of each basket, it is worked into one, through the other parts they are worked asunder, as if they were two joined a-top by some strong cement. A large nest consists of eight or ten baskets, contained within each other. Their dimensions are different, but they usually make the outside basket about a foot deep, a foot and an half broad, and almost a yard long.[7] This statement could in most respects be made with equal truth and propriety of the Cherokee work of the present time; and their pre-Columbian art must have been even more pleasing, as the following paragraph suggests: The Indians, by reason of our supplying them so cheap with every sort of goods, have forgotten the chief part of their ancient mechanical skill, so as not to be well able now, at least for some years, to live independent of us. Formerly, those baskets which the Cheerake made, were so highly esteemed even in South Carolina, the politest of our colonies, for domestic usefulness, beauty, and skilful variety, that a large nest of them cost upwards of a moidore.[8] That there was much uniformity in the processes and range of products and uses throughout the country is apparent from statements made by numerous writers. Speaking of the Louisiana Indians, Du Pratz says: The women likewise make a kind of hampers to carry corn, flesh, fish, or any other thing which they want to transport from one place to another; they are round, deeper than broad, and of all sizes. * * * They make baskets with long lids that roll doubly over them, and in these they place their earrings and pendants, their bracelets, garters, their ribbands for their hair, and their vermillion for painting themselves, if they have any, but when they have no vermillion they boil ochre, and paint themselves with that.[9]