but the general design is purely Indian; the figures are further completed with native head dresses of feathers, and the whole conception and execution well illustrate the usual style of the more elaborate Chippeway pipe sculptures.

One of the most celebrated of these Indian pipe sculptors is Pabahmesad, or the Flier, an old Chippeway still living on the Great Manitouanin Island in Lake Huron; but more generally known as Pwahguneka: the Pipe Maker, literally "he makes pipes." Though brought in contact with the Christian Indians of the Mahnetooahning, or Manitoulin Islands, Dr. O'Meara informs me that he resolutely adheres to the pagan creed and rites of his fathers, and resists all the encroachments of civilization. His materials are the muhkuhdapwahgunahbeck, or black pipe-stone of Lake Huron, the wahbepwahgunahbeck, or white pipe-stone, procured on St. Joseph's Island, and the miskopwahgunahbeck, or red pipe-stone of the Couteau de Prairies. His saw, with which the stone is first roughly blocked out, is made by himself out of a bit of iron hoop, and his other tools are correspondingly rude; nevertheless the workmanship of Pabahmesad shows him to be a master of his art. One of the specimens of his skill has been deposited by Dr. O'Meara in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin, which, from the description I have received, appears to correspond very closely to the example figured on plate II. Another of the Chippeway black-stone pipes in Mr. Allan's collection is a square tube terminating in a horse's head, turned back, so as to be attached by its nose to the bowl of the pipe, and on the longer side of the tube two figures are seated, one behind the other, on the ground, with their knees bent up, and looking towards the pipe bowl. A different specimen of the Chieppeway pipe, brought from the north-west by Mr. Kane, is made from the root of a red deer's horn, inlaid with lead, as in the red pipe-stone and limestone pipes already referred to as made by the Chippeways, the Winnebagos, and the Siouxs.

But the most remarkable of all the specimens of pipe sculpture executed by the Indians of the north-west, are those carved by the Babeen, or big-lip Indians; so called from the singular deformity they produce by inserting a piece of wood into a slit made in the lower lip. The Babeen Indians are found along the Pacific Coast, about latitude 54° 40′, and extend from the borders of the Russian dominions east-ward nearly to Frazer River. Some of the customs of the Babeen Indians are scarcely less singular than that from whence their name is derived; and are deserving of minute compari

son with the older practices which pertained to the more civilized regions of the continent. This is especially the case in relation to their rites of sepulture, wherein they make a very marked distinction between the sexes. Their females are wrapped in mats, and placed on an elevated platform, or in a canoe raised on poles, but they invariably burn their male dead.

The pipes of the Babeen, and also of the Clalam Indians occupying the neighbouring Vancouver's Island, are carved with the utmost elaborateness, and in the most singular and grotesque devices, from a soft blue claystone or slate.

Their form is in part determined by the material, which is only procurable in thin slabs; so that the sculptures, wrought on both sides, present a sort of double bas-relief. From this, singular and grotesque groups are carved, without any apparent reference to the final destination of the whole as a pipe. The lower side is generally a straight line, and in the specimens I have examined they measure from two or three, to fifteen inches long; so that in these the pipe-stem is included. A small hollow is carved out of some protruding ornament to serve as the bowl of the pipe, and from the further end a perforation is drilled to connect with this. The only addition made to it when in use is the insertion of a quill or straw as a mouth piece. One of these shewn on Plate II., Fig. I., is from a drawing made by Mr. Kane, during his residence among the Babeen Indians. The original measured seven inches long.. Plate III., is copied from one of the largest and most elaborate of the specimens brought back with him; it measures nearly fifteen inches long, and supplies a highly characteristic example of Babeen art.

Messrs. Squier and Davis conclude their remarks on the sculptures of the mounds, by observing: "It is unnecessary to say more than that, as works of art, they are immeasurably beyond anything which the North American Indians are known to produce, even at this day, with all the suggestions of European art, and the advantages afforded by steel instruments. The Chinooks, and the Indians of the north-western coast, carve pipes, platters, and other articles, with much neatness, from slate. We see in their pipes, for instance, a heterogeneous collection of pulleys, cords, barrels, and rude human figures, evidently suggested by the tackling of the ships trading in those seas. The utmost that can be said of them is, that they are elaborate, unmeaning carvings, displaying some degree of ingenuity. A much higher rank can be claimed for the Moundsculptures; they combine taste in arrangement with skill in workman

ship, and are faithful copies, not distorted caricatures, from nature. So far as fidelity is concerned, many of them deserve to rank by the side of the best efforts of the artist-naturalists of our own day."

This descriptive comparison with the arts of the Indians of the north-west coast is based, as the illustrations given here (Plates II. and III.) suffice to show, on deductions drawn from the examination of specimens very different from those which have been brought from the same localities, or investigated in the hands of the native sculptors, and obviously constitute the true illustrations of Indian skill and artistic design. In addition to these, however, among the varied collection of Indian relics brought by Mr. Kane from the north-west coast, there is one of the ingenious examples of imitative skill referred to by Mr. Squier, which was procured on Vancouver's Island. But while this exhibits evidence of the same s killful dexterity as the other carvings in the blue pipe-slate of the Clalam and Babeen Indians, it presents the most striking contrast to them, alike in design and style of art. It has a regular bowl, imitated from that of a common clay pipe, and is decorated with twisted ropes, part of a ship's bulkhead, and other objects-including even the head of a screw-nail,-all equally familiar to us, but which no doubt attracted the eye of the native artist from their novelty. Very different from this are the genuine native pipes. They are composed of varied and elaborate devices, including human figures, some of them with birds' and beasts' heads, and frequently presenting considerable accuracy of imitative skill. The frog is a favourite subject, represented generally of the same size as the accompanying human figures, but with a very spirited and life-like verisimilitude. In some of the larger pipes, the entire group presents much of the grotesque exuberance of fancy, mingled with imitations borrowed direct from nature, which constitute the charm of the Gothic ecclesiastical sculptures of the thirteenth century. The figures are grouped together in the oddest varieties of posture, and ingeniously interlaced, and connected by elaborate ornaments; the intermediate spaces being perforated, so as to give great lightness of appearance to the whole. But though well calculated to recall the quaint products of the medieval sculptor's chisel, so far are these Babeen carvings from suggesting the slightest resemblance to European models, that when first examining them, as well as specimens in bone and ivory from the same locality,—and still more so, some ivory carvings executed by the Tawatin Indians on Frazer River,-I was struck with certain

* Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 272.