The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-10-24

upon his employer in this extraordinary
fashion As a matter of fact, neither he
nor his employer were aware of the ma
| ture of the little treasure until long after
! its discovery when Mr.. Dreyfus, searching
! for some explanation of the curiO in works
descriptive of ancient ornaments found an
| illustration which was an exact copy of
this head. and learned to his amazement
! that ii was a specimen of the work of the
ancient Phoenicians, view afterward
| confirmed by travellers. Here, again. all
motive for fraud would be wanting, for
had the collector himself obtained the ac-
qured head from other sources he would
| scarcely have desired to detract from its
value by attributing it to this remarkable
origin. Neither the collection itself nor
any article in it is for sale.
That the California Indians had no
| knowledge whatever of the art of glass
making and were rude artificers at the
best, Is fact too well known for debate
! Therefore, they could never have fash
| toned this exquisite ornament, a finished
! specimen of the highest art. But l have
recently stumbled across a curious fact
which it seems strange has not been given
| prominence before this. Among the arti-
| cles taken from the ancient mounds in
| this vicinity were not only stone imple-
| ments and utensils and Clipped arrow
| heads and all manner of stone articles a s
! well as disks of stone and SHE'LL but num-
bers of glass beads have been found from
| time to time. These heads come from
graves that antedate the Spanish occu-
| pancy of the country, which, it must be
remembered, only extends back about 100
| years. Where, then, did they come from?
| They have commonly been thrown away,
as seeming to cast discredit upon the stone
| implements found associated with them.
Mr. Dreyfus has strings of them and
some of them are of unusual beauty and
entirely unlike anything of modern man.
ufacture. Some are of cut blue glass,
some opalescent and iridescent. They do
not make such beads to-day, and l am
not sure that all of them are glass; nor
that precious stones of more or less value
might not be found among them, but that
they did not originate here in California
is certain, and there is no instance of
their having been found in any of the in.
terror valleys but only along the coast.
1t seems a simple and reasonable theory
to imagine that they were brought here by
early Voyagers; by Cabrillo in the early
part of the seventeenth century, by early
voyagers of whom we have no record, or
on the wrecks of those lost ships from the
orient of which Prof Davidson furnishes
a list of hfty-six stranded or wrecked
upon our shores since the year 1710 and
which had probably been drifting upon
our coast for countless centuries before
civilization took out it's notebook and be-
might have brought the pretty glass beads
to the Santa Barbara channel and, for
that matter, Cabrlllo himself old voyager
that he was and gathering treasures In
many lands, might easily have CHANGED
upon this dainty specimen Of Phoenician
art, for at one time Phoenician commerce
commanded all the ports in the word. and
that nation even occupied two Of the most
important provinces of Spain. Accident
may then have brought ii into the posses
sion of the dead savage as the reward for
some act of bravery or unseifsh service,
or admiration and enterprise may have
overmastered his scruples, as sometimes
even happens in modern days and he may
by strategy have possessed himself of the
pretty baube and worn IL as an amulet
or decora ton, to be afterward buried with
him along with his other possessions. In
the same way many incongruous articles
found in these Indian mounds may be ac-
counted for notably pair Of copper Jars
of antique form and erusted with verdi
girls. also taken form these Refugio
mounds.