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For he was as wretched as a stone-breaker, as one of those poor devils who work and nearly break their backs over the hard flints the whole day long, under the scorching sun or the cold rain; and Marie Anne herself was not happy, for she was pining for the past and remembered their former love.
Harvesting and threshing are going forward briskly, but the busy hum of the self-binder and the threshing-machine is not heard; the reaping is done with rude hooks, and the threshing by dragging round and round, with horses or oxen, sleigh-runner shaped, broad boards, roughed with flints or iron points, making the surface resemble a huge rasp.
He learned that no stones but the dry flints he found close to the wall would strike sparks; but, careless, improvident, petulant child of nature that he was, he exhausted the supply, and one day, too indolent to search his hunting-tracts to regain the necessary two, he endeavored to draw fire from a pair that he dug from the moist earth, and failing, threw them with all his strength at the rocky wall.
From the character of the island, which appeared to be entirely volcanic, I had no hope of finding flints. Just then it flashed across me that a few days before I had been using a glass from my telescope as a burning-glass, and I recollected putting it in my pocket on being called off suddenly to attend to some duty; I had little hope, however, of finding it unbroken.
We shall have to refer again to these discoveries; we will only add now that in the black earth forming the soil were found worked flints, polished diorite hatchets, pierced shells, with various pieces of pottery, and mills for grinding corn. So far, however though many of the stations have been explored, no trace has been found of the use of metals.
A sand-pit of Levallois-Perret yielded 4,000 stone objects, and on the plateau of Champigny, full of such terrible memories for the people of France, were found nearly 1,200 flints, knives, polished hatchets, lance heads and scrapers, mixed with numerous fragments of hand-made pottery without ornamentation. Are yet other examples needed?
"We'll just keep the old Redskins employed while Mr. Rochford or Mr. Maurice lifts her on her horse and gallops off with her. They're not likely to have any fire-arms in the place, except maybe a few old muskets without flints in them, as the warriors will have carried off all they own to fight the whites." I thought Tim's proposal worthy of consideration.
A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration his gray flints of eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearly always, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he would plaster on the penalty and the lecture twice as thick.
He states his conclusions frankly: "The shape of the flints," he says, "is so regular, that it is impossible to confound them with those found in the Chalk or in Tertiary strata. Reflection compels us to admit that these flints were worked by the hand of man, and that they may have been used as arrows or as knives."
Hawkweeds, some wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and burdocks conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has the appearance of a green drive. The slender birch and ash poles are hung with woodbine and wild hops, both growing in profusion.
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