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Updated: June 25, 2025
For my purposes, this beautifully carved piece of obsidian was far more precious than a diamond would have been; and I tried quite unsuccessfully, however to arouse his interest in this proof of the high degree of skill to which the prehistoric races of America had attained in the manipulation of an exceedingly hard yet delicate variety of stone; and I added that not less interesting was the proof thus afforded us of the great value which these same races attached to implements of war.
The term glastenized glass is employed by Dr. The third variety of obsidian of the Peak is the most remarkable of the whole, from its connexion with pumice-stone. It is, like that above described, of a greenish black, sometimes of a murky grey, but its very thin plates alternate with layers of pumice-stone. Dr.
Then with huge levers, picks, and shovels, they pushed and pried the shining pieces down into the lake, and opened thus a wagon-road a thousand feet in length. The region of the Yellowstone was to most Indian tribes a place of horror. They trembled at the awful sights they here beheld. But the obsidian cliff was precious to them all.
'It is Night, said Qat; 'sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down and keep quiet. So they went to sleep. 'When Night had lasted long enough, Qat took a piece of red obsidian, and cut the darkness, and the Dawn came out. Night is more or less personal in this tale, and solid enough to be cut, so as to let the Dawn out.
The mines were mere wells, not very deep; with horizontal workings into the obsidian where it was very good and in thick layers. Round about were heaps of fragments, hundreds of tons of them; and it was clear, from the shape of these, that some of the manufacturing was done on the spot.
But whether obsidians be primitive rocks which have undergone the action of volcanic fire, or lavas repeatedly melted within the crater, the origin of the pumice-stones contained in the obsidian of the Peak of Teneriffe is not less problematic.
In both countries this variety of lava was employed as an object of ornament: and the inhabitants of Quito made beautiful looking-glasses with an obsidian divided into parallel laminae. There are three varieties of obsidian at the Peak. Some form enormous blocks, several toises long, and often of a spheroidal shape.
We should have liked to be at the feast, but time was short, so we rode on to the top of Mount Jacal, 12,000 feet above the sea, where there was a view of mountains and valleys, and heat that was positively melting. Thence down to the Cerro de Navajas, the "hill of knives." It is on the sides of this hill that obsidian is found in enormous quantities.
We left our horses at the entrance, and spent an hour or two in hunting the place over. The ground was covered with pieces of obsidian knives and arrow-heads, and fragments of what seemed to have been larger tools or weapons; and we found numbers of hammer-heads, large and small, mostly made of greenstone, some whole, but most broken. We find two sorts of stone hammers in Europe.
The pyramid is built of rows of bricks baked in the sun, and cemented together with mortar in which had been stuck quantities of small stones, fragments of pottery, and bits of obsidian knives and weapons. Between rows of bricks are alternate layers of clay. It was built in four terraces, of which traces are still to be distinguished; and is about 200 feet high.
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