ABORIGINAL POTTERY. 



575 



Before presenting the facts that have confirmed me in my original 

 view of the manner in which tliese salt-pans were formed, and that I 

 may be better understood, I will endeavor to describe the location 

 where the fragments are found. 



My first visit was in company with my friend the late Dr. David 

 Dale Owen, about the year 1854. We found two water-worn ravines, 

 commencing on the hills that rise abruptly on the south side of the 

 Saline River, and drain into it. At the base of the hills they are 

 crossed by a State road, between which and the river their bottoms 

 are level, hard, and barren, and here, close to the road rise the salt- 

 springs. Between the ravines is a bench or river-bottom subject to 

 annual overflow. 



These bottoms, as well as the hill-sides, were covered with a thick 

 growth of young timber the primitive forest having been cut off for 

 fuel for evaporating the brine at the time the salines were worked by 

 the early settlers. The principal spring was then, and is now, known 

 as the " Nigger " well or salt-works, as it was worked by slave-labor 

 while the State of Illinois was a Territory. 



Fig. 1. 



The spring in the west ravine overflowed a curbed well about eight 

 feet square, which I sounded, and found to be about forty feet deep. 

 In the east ravine a salt-spring was oozing. A short distance above 

 the curbed well flows a sulphur-spring, and near it one of good fresh 

 water. 



I have been informed, by a reliable party who had personal knowl- 

 edge of all that was done by the early settlers in working the salines, 



