restricted to one locality, but extend over the entire length of
the copper region, from the eastern extremity of Keweenaw Point to the
Porcupine Mountains, a distance of nearly one hundred miles.

In some of the ancient diggings, the stone hammers have the marks of
hard usage, fractured or battered faces, and a large proportion of them
are broken and unfit for use; but in other pits the hammers are all
sound, and many of them have the appearance of never having been used.
These hammers, or mauls, which are of various sizes, and not uniform in
shape, are water-worn stones, of great hardness, similar in all respects
to those that are found in abundance on the shore of the Lake, or in the
gravel-banks of that region. They are generally trap-rock, embracing the
varieties of gray, porphyritic, hornblendic, sienitic, and amygdaloidal
trap, and appear to have had no labor expended upon them except the
chiselling of a groove around the middle for the purpose of attaching a
withe to serve as a handle. In a few instances, I have noticed small
hammers, usually egg-shaped, without a groove; and the battered or worn
appearance at one end was all that induced the belief that they were
ever used for hammering.

These hammers are usually from six to eight inches in length, and from
eight to twelve inches in circumference, and weigh from four to eight
pounds; but I have measured specimens that were twenty-four inches in
circumference at the groove, and would weigh thirty pounds. It seems
hardly probable that one man could wield so ponderous a tool; and from
the fact that some of the large mauls have two grooves around them, it
is presumed that two men were employed in using them.

Stone hammers are found in all the ancient diggings, and in some
instances the number is almost incredible. From the pits near the
Minnesota mines it is estimated that ten cart-loads have been removed; I
was informed that a well there was entirely stoned up with them, and
from the great number still remaining I am inclined to believe the
report. A still greater number are said to have been found at the
Mesnard and Pontiac Mines, in the Portage Lake district. Farther east,
in the vicinity of the Cliff and Central Mines, they are also abundant;
and it would seem, from the circumstance of their being invariably found
in the pits, that the law among the ancient miners was similar to the
one adopted by the adventurers in California a few years since, who
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