DISCOVERY OF A STONE HATCHET AT BALLARAT, VICTOEIA.

Colonist, Volume XIII, Issue 1285, 18 January 1870, Page 3

DISCOVERY OF A STONE HATCHET AT BALLARAT, VICTOEIA.

Profiting by the experiences of arcliseolegists and ethnologists in Britain and continental Europe, who,have many a time been cruelly deceived, notwithstanding their erudition, their guarded reception of evidence, and practiced eye, we may be excused (sfiys the Ballarat Star) for at present not according the fullest credence to circumstances communicated to us on Sunday night by Mr. Patrick Mitchell, a director of the Garibaldi Gold-mining Company, Napoleon. He presented to our astonished gaze, as a recent find.from the depths of that mine, a wellfashioned stone weapon, head and haft; all in one piece, exactly twelve inches in length. The weapon is of a sort of very light-colored elate, with bits of mundic visible here and there upon its surface. It is very hard and heavy, and would' prove formidable enough if used with a will upon anybody's cranium or limbs. It may be described as an axe intended for use back and. front, with a handle as well formed for the grasp of the hand as any American'axeor tomahawk of the present hour. r The head is somewhat triangular, the chief hitting'point being the apex. The width from the apex to the base, otherwise the back edge of the implement, is 3£ inches, and its thickness at the centre is about If inches. Mr. Mitchell states that the implement or weapon was discovered on Friday nigbt, and was brought to the surface by the captain on the change of shift at midnight. He gave it to the manager, and Mitchell possessed himself of it on Saturday, intending to submit it to the opinion of Professor M'Coy, of the Melbourne University. It ia stated ,to have been found in the wash dirt upon the reef, or clay slate, in a tributary to the main gutter, at a depth of some 300 feet below the surface, and beneath the lowest stratum of the basaltic rock. Presuming that upon the fullest investigation there can be no doubt of this implement having been found in the place indicated, and that it did not find its way there by any surreptitious means, the fact amounts to due of the most interesting and important ethnological discoveries ever made in this country. [Mr. Cawthron, of Nelson City, who saw the abore paragraph, relates that about fourteen years ago, in one of the shafts at Ballarat, a large knobbed piece of wood was found about sixty feet from the surface, embedded either in the drift or the black clay immediately overlying it. ' This stick had'carved on it a hideous bead with the tongue protruded, similar to the carvings practised by the Maoris. The singular thing is that the presentraco of natives in Australia do not practice carvings, except in their spear-heads, certainly none of the kind alluded to. Mr. Cawthron also tells us of the trunk of a large tree, six feet in diameter, at a depth of about 180 feet from the surface;— Rd, Gofouwf.}