and
general outline than are some of the quartz discordal stones found in
these same States. These latter objects are often from 4 to 6 inches,
and occasionally 7 inches, in diameter, ground in the center until they
are of the thinness of paper and almost transparent, and the great
regularity of the two sides would almost suggest that they had been
turned in a lathe. This may have been accomplished by mounting a log in
the side of a tree so that it would revolve, and cementing the stones
with pitch to the end of the log, as a lapidary would do to-day at
Oberstein, Germany, or by allowing the shaft of the lathe to protrude
through the side of the log, and cementing the stone to be turned on
this. The Egyptian wood-turner at work in the Rue du Caire, at the
World's Fair held in Paris during 1889, might, with his lathe, polish a
large ornament of jade for jadeite, like the masks, idols, tablets, and
other objects found in Mexico and Central America, or the jade knives
from Alaska, in the United States National Museum.
Numerous
descriptions have appeared of the chipping—or rather arrow-making—of
aboriginal lapidarians. Caleb Lyon describes a California Indian of
the Shasta tribe, whom he had seen making arrow-heads of obsidian.
"The
Indian," he says, "seated himself on the floor, and placing a stone
anvil upon his knee, which was of compact talcose slate, with one blow
of his agate chisel he separated the obsidian pebble into two parts,
then giving another blow to the fractured side he split off a slab a
fourth of an inch in thickness. Holding the piece against the anvil
with thumb and finger of his left hand, he commenced a series of
continuous blows, every one of which chipped off fragments of the
brittle substance. I.t gradually assumed the required shape. After
finishing the base of the arrow-head (the whole being only a little
over an inch in length) he began striking gentler blows, every one of
which he expected would break it into pieces. Yet such was their adroit
application, his skill and dexterity, that in little over an hour he
produced a perfect obsidian arrow-head. Among them arrow-making is a
distinct trade or profession, which many attempt, but in which few
attain excellence." '
