It must not be supposed that all the Amerinds of that region were miners, any more than that all the Amerinds of any other region were equally developed or skilful, or all did the same things. The Navajos of the South-west are some of them expert silver-workers, yet their neighbours, for the most part, can do little or nothing in that line. But that is no reason for supposing the Navajos to be a race distinct and apart from the rest. No more were the workers of the Lake Superior copper mines any different from their neighbours in general. They had a knack of working the native copper out of the ground, and they worked it just as others mined for flint. When they ceased it was probably because they had worked out all the easy places they could find, or that their trade fell off owing to the introduction by the Europeans of manufactured articles of copper and iron. [Illustration: ESKIMO STONE MAUL.] In one of the ancient pits a hemlock with 395 annular rings was growing, and this has led to the supposition that the mines were worked before the time of Columbus. The excavations undoubtedly extended over a long period; from before Columbus to after Champlain. But it was over three hundred years after Columbus before the first explorations of the Lake Superior region were made by General Cass, and hence the tree had time to grow since that date. On the whole, there seems to be no reason for supposing that anyone but Amerinds worked these mines; Amerinds lastly of Algonquin stock, though other stocks probably worked them also. The method of utilising this copper in the Northern regions, that is, north of Mexico, was as primitive as the method of extracting it from the ground. It seems often, perhaps generally, to have been hammered into shape cold and then finished by grinding. Doubtless they knew how to melt it out of the rock on a small scale, allowing it to drop or run into a mould scraped into the surface of a flat stone, somewhat the shape of the article to be made, which would afterward be finished with hammering and grinding.