wrought stone implement, that in Europe was characteristic of his
handiwork. Here, in the valley of the Delaware, this same form of
implement has been confidently asserted to be a rejected piece of
stone--usually argillite--that failed to lend itself to reduction to a
finished blade or spear point. If this could be established as of
invariable application, however the supposed "reject" occurred, then
the whole matter would be brought to a quick conclusion. But the
"reject" theory has utterly failed of establishment. The typical
paleolithic implement is not characteristic of the refuse of an
arrow-maker's workshop site, and the familiar arrow points of small
size, nor even the long, thin blades of several times their length,
were reduced from masses greatly larger than the desired form. The
refuse of many a chipping site shows this conclusively; and, as
hundreds of failures demonstrate, many an arrowhead was made from a
pebble but a trifle larger than the finished object.
But admit, for argument's sake, the identity in shape of a "reject"
and a "paleolithic" implement; this does not prove their identity in
age and origin, and it is not an unwarranted or illogical suggestion
to draw a distinction between the two, where the conditions under
which they occur suggest a possibility of diverse history. Rather than
demonstrating that all rudely chipped stones are "failures," it should
be shown that paleolithic man, as we know of him in Europe, could not
possibly have existed here. This has not only never been attempted,
but the conditions during and immediately subsequent to the glaciation
of the river valley have been asserted, time and again, to have been
favorable for man's existence. Furthermore, it has not been shown that
a typical paleolithic implement could not have been available on this
continent, as it undoubtedly was in Europe, as an effective weapon,
and it must be remembered that the fauna of the Delaware Valley was,
in glacial times, very like that of parts of Europe in what we may
call the reindeer period. Like conditions may not have produced like
results in the case of early man, but what was practicable in Europe
was certainly so in America, and the question resolves itself into
that of determining if any trace of man that has been discovered in
the valley of the Delaware can be dated back to a time preceding the
Indian as he was when first he came in contact with the European. Did,
in other words, the Indian bring his art with him from Europe or Asia,
or did he experience a growth in culture from paleolithic simplicity
to neolithic complexity?
The whole subject hinges on the distribution of these traces of man.
If from the first day of his occupancy until the European replaced the
Indian the immediate valley of the river had undergone no change, then
the imperishable relics of the first and last savage would remain
associated, and position alone would tell nothing concerning any
particular object's age or origin, but, at the present day, except the
contents of graves, not a stone implement of the Delaware Indians
rests where chance or the intention of its one-time owner placed it.
Indeed, save a few bowlders of the largest size, few natural objects
on the immediate shores of the river are as first seen by William Penn
and his associates. This fact has not been duly considered, and
unwarranted conclusions have been published as established
truths--all, of course, eliminating antiquity from the Indian history
of the region. The fact that a so-called paleolithic implement was
found lying on the surface of the river's shore has resulted in a pen
picture of a modern Indian attempting to fashion a blade and tossing
the pebble aside in disgust. Why, indeed, could not an Indian walk on
exposed gravel and pick up a pebble as well as we can to-day?
There are two considerations to which we must give heed when this
question is asked. We are, in the first place, tacitly informed that
the Indian was given to chipping stone in this haphazard way to supply
a sudden need upon the spot, all of which is not only not a reasonable
assumption, but absolutely incorrect, as argillite bowlders and
pebbles, which are not abundant in the gravels, were not habitually
used, but, instead, the mineral was systematically mined and selected
with skill, so that failures were reduced to a minimum. Then, again,
if the object as found has been lying undisturbed on the river shore
for centuries--two centuries at least--why is it that the chips are
not there also? These are never found under such circumstances. In
fact, they are very rarely found at all in the gravel where the
implement itself occurs, and in numbers they exceed the "reject" or
finished object at least as ten to one. Furthermore, we are asked to
believe that the river shore where we find rude implements is the same
to-day as when the Indian wandered along it centuries ago. Fig. 1
shows clearly how the never-resting tidal flow wears away the shore,
carrying sand and fine gravels from one point and spreading it
elsewhere to form a sand bar, it may be, and turning the channel from
one side of the stream to the other, and so exposing long reaches of
the shore to wasting, that for many a year had been fixed and
apparently secure. Often the mud is entirely removed from the
underlying gravel, and abundant traces of Indian occupation are
brought to light, and, less frequently, so strong a current attacks a
given point that even the gravel is moved and deep holes are formed,
to be filled in time with the wasting shore from a point perhaps a
mile away. This is the story of the river of to-day, and so it has
been for centuries; and yet we are asked to believe that we can fill
the moccasin prints of the Indian by walking now along the water's
edge. I submit that it is asking a great deal too much.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--WASTING RIVER SHORE DUE TO TIDAL FLOW.]
It has been suggested that rudely chipped implements, when found on
the gravelly shore of the river, have fallen out from the bank and
rolled down from where they had long been lying. This is not at all
improbable; but how does this modernize the object, when the gravel
extends quite to the surface? The pebbles and bowlders at the top of
the bank are clearly as much a part of the deposit as are those at its
base, and while the surface may be--is, in fact--less ancient than the
deeper gravels, still they can not be dissociated; and it is a
significant fact that we find, on the gravel at the foot of the bluff
or other exposure, only the rude argillite objects at the water's edge
or on the flat laid bare at low tide, and not a general assortment of
the Indian's handiwork, including pottery; and we must not overlook
the fact that the "gravel-bed" implements bear evidence of all the
conditions to which the gravel itself has been subjected--this one
stained by manganese, that incrusted with limonite; this fresh as the
day it was chipped, because lost in sand and water and not
subsequently exposed to the atmosphere; that buried and unearthed,
rolled, scratched, and water-worn until much of its artificiality has
disappeared. The history of almost every specimen is written upon it,
and not one tells such a story as has been told about it by the
advocates of the "Indian-reject" theory.
Much has been written on the natural history of the gravel that is so
marked a feature of the river valley, particularly at the head of
tide water, and almost every essay differs in more or less degree from
its fellows in the matter of the gravel's age as a well-defined
deposit. Its origin no one can question, nor the agencies by which it
was brought to where we now find it. Ice and water did the work, nor
have they ceased entirely to add to the bulk transported in strictly
glacial times--perhaps it were better to say in superlatively glacial
time, as the river even now can be positively glacial upon occasion,
as Fig. 2 demonstrates. The main channel has often been completely
blocked with ice and the water forced into new directions and spread
over the lowlands or flats, which it denudes of its surface soil, and
once within recent years the stream found an old channel, deepened it,
and for a time threatened to leave a flourishing riverside town an
inland one. Ice accumulated in this way year after year must
necessarily affect the river's banks, and yet the extent of "damage"
is trifling usually, in comparison with that of the water,
particularly when agitated by passing steamboats or violent winds; and
now, too, the ice of our present winters does not transport coarse
pebbles to any significant extent. I am convinced of this since the
examination I gave acres of ice, when the river was gorged with it,
some years ago. It was possible to walk for miles over the ice, as
shown in Fig. 2, and to see it under exceedingly favorable
circumstances, and a most careful search failed to reveal a stone
larger than a pigeon's egg incased in this ice, which was all gently
floated from far up the stream and stranded here; and where piled up
upon the shores it usually remains until melted, and really acts as
armor plate, protecting the ground from abrasion when the floods
incident to the "break-up" prevail. Such are the present-day
considerations, and they have a direct bearing upon the question of
man's antiquity here because, first, the river valley has not varied
for hundreds of years, except in becoming wider, the low shores
receding, and the stream becoming broader and more shallow. In
earliest Indian times the river was subject to freshets and ice gorges
as now, but never did the water become so dammed up as to overflow the
broad plateaus, areas of glacial gravel, that at the close of the
Glacial period were within the boundary of the river. The Delaware was
a very different stream then--_crescendo_ for thousands of years, and
_diminuendo_ for thousands since--until now it barely hints at what
once was. But not even in the height of its glacial activity was the
climate so severe that the waters contained no fish, nor the forests
of the high surrounding hills harbored no game. Never was it as bleak
as the arctic region of to-day, and as man maintains a footing there,
why should he not have done so here, where life was ever more easily
sustained? True; but did he live here in glacial time?
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--ICE-GORGED RIVER.
Reproducing on a small scale the conditions of the Glacial epoch.]
It has been stated in the most positive manner, which only positive
evidence could warrant, that so-called paleolithic implements have not
been found _in situ_ in gravel deposits at a distance from the river,
and such, _if there were such_, as appeared to be in the gravel, were
recent intrusions. This statement, in its several parts and its
entirety, is absolutely incorrect, and no excuse can be offered for
its publication. It is to be explained, however, because avowedly
predetermined. Wherever the glacial gravel of the Delaware tide-water
region is found, there paleolithic implements occur, as they also do
on and in the surface of areas beyond the gravel boundary. We accept,
notwithstanding the unscientific source of the suggestion, the
statement that post-glacial floods inhumed all traces of man found
beneath the superficial soils, and find that, if these traces are
considered in that light, some mysterious power was behind the
senseless flood, and always buried argillite paleolithic implements
far down in the gravel, and then selected argillite artifacts of more
specialized forms for the overlying sands and reserved the pottery and
jasper arrow points for the vegetation-sustaining soil. This, as
stated, is absurd, but such is the order of occurrence of the traces
of early man in the upland fields, and these are to be considered
carefully before a final conclusion can be reached. The broad,
elevated plateau extending eastward from the present bank of the river
offers facilities for studying the evidences of man's occupancy in
this region such as are to be found in few localities. The principal
reason for this is that almost no local disturbance has occurred since
the original deposition of the sand that overlies the gravel and
underlies the soil. The natural history of these underlying sands has
recently received a good deal of attention, because, unlike the deeper
gravels, there is perfect accord as to the occurrences therein of
artificially chipped objects; and the suggestion that they are of
intrusive origin being set aside as untenable, the geologists are now
divided on the question whether the sand is wind-blown, a modified
dune, and so not necessarily old even in years, or the result of
intermitting overflow of water, usually carrying a considerable amount
of sand and often heavy with washings from some distant clay bank. The
objections to the "eolian" theory are that pebbles and bowlders, even
of considerable weight, are scattered at all elevations through the
sand, and these pebbles, as a rule, do not present any evidence of
exposure to eroding sands, but are smooth and glassy, or the typical
water-worn pebbles of a brook or the river bed, and more significant
is the fact that the sands themselves are of different degrees of
fineness, layer upon layer, and are nowhere clean or free from clay;
and finally the thin layers of clay are clearly continuous over such
extensive areas that in no sense can they be called segregations of
that material. On the other hand, a carefully instituted comparison of
the sand from the surface of the field to its junction with the gravel
proper shows its identity with a deposit made by water in
comparatively recent times. No difference whatever could be detected.
The sand dune, modified by rains and finally leveled to a plain,
presents, in section, no such appearance as the sands that overlie the
gravels of glacial origin. Without a scintilla of reason, however,
many geologists declare that no deposit of sand can be of any
geological significance _if it contains traces of man not clearly
intrusive_. The latter fact necessitates the former claim, all of
which, I submit, is nonsense.
Fig. 3 illustrates how artificially chipped pebbles occur in this
underlying sand. The upper portion shows the superficial soil removed
to its point of contact with the sand. This is determined by the
change of color from dark brown to light yellowish brown, and it is
generally so very abrupt a change that no doubt arises as to where the
soil ends and the sand begins. The sand proper is shown by the
position of the object--the measuring rule and trowel. It will be
noticed that the implement is lying flat, as such an object would
almost necessarily be if transported by water, and not perpendicular,
as would be the case if it had fallen down some root-hole, animal's or
insect's burrow, or opening in the earth from any cause, and now
obliterated.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--OCCURRENCE OF AN ARGILLITE IMPLEMENT IN
GLACIAL STRATIFIED SAND.]
The presence of these artificial flakes, blades, and other forms of
simple implements can only be explained by considering them as a
constituent part of the containing bed, having been brought hither by
the same agency that brought the sand, pebbles, and clay. When
standing before a newly made section of this implement-bearing deposit
it is easy to picture the slow progress of its accumulation. The broad
plain has been subjected to overflow, now of water bearing only sand,
and then of muddy water; now with current strong enough to roll small
pebbles from some distant point, and then periods when the sun shone
on the new deposit, dried it, and the loose sand was rippled by the
wind. Floods of greater volume occasionally swept across the plain,
and ice-incased pebbles were dropped upon its surface, and with this
building up of the plateau to a higher level there were also brought
to it traces of man's handiwork. Of this, I think, there can be no
doubt now. Years ago I endeavored to show from the distribution of
rude argillite implements of specialized forms, as arrow points and
small blades, trimmed flakes and scrapers, that these objects were
older, as a class, than jasper and quartz implements and weapons, and
that pottery was made only in the rudest way before "flint"
chipping--jasper and quartz--was established. The more exhaustively
this subject was followed up, the proposition became more evidently
true, and to-day it is unqualifiedly confirmed by the results obtained
from systematically digging deeply over wide areas of country. The
fact that argillite continued in use until the very last does not
affect this conclusion.
As the high land, now forty or more feet above the river and beyond
the reach of its floods of greatest magnitude, was once continually
overflowed and gradually built up by the materials the water spread
upon it, it is evident that the conditions were materially different
when such things happened from what now obtains, and the whole
configuration of the country to-day points to but the one conclusion:
that these plateau-building floods occurred so long ago as when the
river flowed at a higher level and possessed a greater transporting
power than at present. This, it is true, was long after the coarse
gravel and huge bowlders were transported from the hillsides of the
upper valley, but it was before the river was confined to its present
channel, and more significantly before what may be called the
soil-making period, itself of long duration and the time of the Indian
as such. Not an argillite chip from the sands beneath the soil but
speaks of the distant day when this plateau was an almost barren
plain, and man saw it, roamed over it, and perhaps dwelt upon it, when
but the scantiest vegetation dotted its surface, and only upon the
hills beyond its boundary were there trees and herbage.
Even if we consider the agency of the streams that now are but
insignificant inflowing brooks in spreading, during their freshet
stages, sand over level areas, we must still go back to a time when
they were streams of infinitely greater magnitude than they have been
for many centuries, and before, too, the Indian was a skilled chipper
of jasper and a potter of taste, else why the absence of these
products of his skill in the deeper sands? It matters not how we look
at it, whether as geologists or archæologists, or whether it is all
post-glacial, or the starting point is still so distant as ice-age
activities, the sequence of events is unaffected. We still have
paleolithicity in the gravel, argillite and the discovery of pottery
synchronous with the deposition of the gravel-capping sand, and,
lastly, the Indian.
The record is not a difficult one to read, and never has been, and the
manifold attempts to modernize all traces of man on the eastern coast
of North America can safely be relegated to the limbo of misdirected
energy. Studied in the proper spirit and after the needful preliminary
study of archæology as a whole, the student will find himself, when in
the field--ever a more desirable place than the museum--face to face
with evidences of an antiquity that is to be measured by centuries
rather than by years.
THE USE OF ACETYLENE.
BY EDWARD RENOUF,
COLLEGIATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
It is now five years since the use of acetylene as an illuminant was
suggested to the public, and it may be of interest to give a sketch of
what has been done during this time, especially as it seems that with
the year 1899 the tentative period which must characterize every new
industry is in some respects passed, and a period of solid and
well-directed industrial effort, backed by ample capital, has begun.
The knowledge gained during this tentative period by the laboratory
experiments of scientific men, and by the practical work of inventors
and promoters, has made it possible for the industry to enter on its
new phase. To understand its present and to foresee its future
importance it is necessary briefly to review the work of the last
years.
In May, 1892, Mr. Thomas Willson, a Canadian electrician, tried to
make the metal calcium in an electric furnace in his works at Spray,
North Carolina, by heating a mixture of lime and coal dust. He thought
that the lime (calcium oxide) would act on the coal (carbon) to form
calcium and carbon monoxide. He did not succeed in getting calcium,
but found in the furnace a brown, crystalline mass, which was
decomposed by pouring water on it, yielding an inflammable gas.
Willson is not a chemist, and he therefore sent specimens of the
material to several men of science to determine its nature. It was
shown to be calcium carbide, a compound of calcium and carbon, formed
by the action of the carbon on the calcium oxide. The reaction
expressed in chemical symbols is CaO + 3C = CaC_{2} + CO. The gas
formed by the action of water was acetylene, a compound of carbon and
hydrogen. The reaction is CaC_{2} + H_{2}O = C_{2}H_{2} + CaO; calcium
carbide and water form acetylene and lime. If water enough is added,
the lime is slaked, and slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH_{2}),
is formed. Neither calcium carbide nor acetylene was a new discovery;
acetylene was discovered by Edmund Davy in 1836, and its properties
were studied by Berthelot in 1862. Impure calcium carbide was first
made in 1862 by Wöhler, who described its decomposition by water into
acetylene and lime. What was there new, then, in Willson's discovery?
Two important facts: (1) He was the first to make carbide by a method
applicable commercially; (2) he was the first to make crystalline
carbide. Wöhler's carbide was impure and amorphous; Willson's, nearly
pure and crystalline, so that he succeeded in obtaining United States
patents for crystalline carbide, and, as all carbide made by
commercial processes is crystalline, its manufacture is covered by
Willson's patents.
In the same year, 1892, Prof. Henri Moissan, of Paris, announced the
discovery of crystalline calcium carbide. Moissan's discovery, too,
was an accidental one. He was reducing refractory metallic oxides in
an electric furnace made of lime. At the close of the article in which
he reports his work to the French Academy of Sciences (_Comptes Rendus
de l'Académie Française_, vol. cxii, page 6, December 12, 1892) he
refers in two lines to the formation of an ill-defined carbide of
calcium by the action of the carbon electrodes on the lime of which
his furnace was made.
As is common with most important inventions, there is a dispute as to
the priority of making carbide by an electric furnace; and the wonder
is, not that there is a dispute, but that there are so few claimants.
A few words of explanation of the electric furnace will show why. The
enormous heat of the electric furnace (2000° to 3000° C.) is caused by
an electric arc, formed by currents playing between carbon electrodes;
carbon is often used in the furnace processes; here we have one
constituent of calcium carbide. Lime, the material for the other
constituent, withstands heat better than any other common substance
excepting magnesia; naturally, inventors would use it, as Moissan did,
as a refractory lining to the furnace. Electric furnaces were not new.
The conditions then were such that the discovery of the carbide was
fairly forced on experimenters, and, as we have seen, the discoveries
of Willson and Moissan were both accidental.
American priority was claimed by Willson, French priority by the
friends of Moissan, German priority by Professor Borchers, of
Aix-la-Chapelle. Fortunately for Willson, among those to whom he had
sent specimens of carbide was Lord Kelvin, the famous English
physicist, whose reply to Willson, stating that the substance received
was calcium carbide, was dated October 3, 1892, two months before
Moissan's first publication. Borchers's claims are too vague to waste
space on. Willson's priority is now generally recognized excepting in
France. The German Government has acknowledged it, and has annulled
the German patent granted to Bullier.
Commercial carbide is essentially an American discovery, and it was
developed industrially by Willson's associates before industrial
action began abroad. Messrs. Dickerson and Suckert, of New York, were
the first to undertake the industrial liquefaction of acetylene. Dr.
G. de Chalmot, chemist, and Mr. J. M. Morehead, electrician, worked up
the details of the furnace process in the early days at Spray, North
Carolina, and the purity and the yield from a given weight of material
of their carbide have never been excelled, though cheaper working
furnaces are now in use.
Carbides of other metals can be made in the electric furnace, but,
owing to the cheapness of the new material, calcium carbide is the
only one of these which has industrial value as a source of acetylene.
One pound of pure carbide yields 5.89 cubic feet of acetylene.