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211

Manufactures & Mechanic Arts. -- "In the spring of the year 1811, was found in a copperas? cave in Warren County, in West Tennessee, about 15 miles southwest from Sparta, and 20 from McMinville, the bodies of two human beings, which had been covered by the dirt or ore from which copperas was made. One of these persons was a male, the other a female. They were interred in baskets, made of cane, curiously wrought, and evidencing great mechanic skill. They were both dislocated at the hip joint, and were placed erect in the baskets, with a covering made of cane, to fit the baskets in which they were placed. The flesh of these persons was entire and undecayed, of a brown dryish colour, produced by time, the flesh having adhered closely to the bones & sinews.

Around the female, next her body, was placed a well dressed deer skin. Next to this was placed a rug, very curiously wrought, of the bark of a tree, & feathers. The bark seemed to have been formed of small strands, well twisted. Around each of these strands, feathers were rolled, and the whole woven into a cloth of firm texture, after the manner of our common warse? fabrics. This rug was about three feet wide, and between six or seven feet in length. The whole of the ligaments thus framed of bark, were completely covered by the feathers, forming a body of about one eighth of an inch in thickness, the feathers extending about one quar-