372 . General Description of Lake Erie, 



south, are usually cut through beds of water-worn matters, 

 which are particularly large about the Huron. Mr. Caleb At- 

 water [Silliman' s Journal, vol. ii., p. 245) mentions the 

 discovery of a mammoth's tooth on the beach of Lake Erie, 

 in the neighbourhood of this river — of another at Dayton, in 

 the Great Miami, and a third on the Scioto rivers. Mr. Keating* 

 represents the country west of this lake to be covered with gra- 

 nitic boulders, and the soil, likewise, to be studded with pebbles. 

 In Michigan territory and Ohio, and especially on the shores 

 of the Detroit river, and of Lake Erie near the Vermilion 

 river, cinnabar occurs in the form of a red and black sand, but 

 it is usually more abundant in banks of fine ferruginous clay. 

 Near the mouth of Vermilion River, it is in the form of a very 

 fine red powder, or in grains and small masses, disseminated in 

 clay. It yields, by distillation, about 60 per cent, of mercury j. 

 I have collected sand, on the north-west shores of Lake Erie, 

 and near the Grand River, which I conceived to be similar 

 to that of Mr. Stickney ; but the packages containing it are 

 lost. 



I have already observed that the north coast of this lake, 

 from the river Detroit to Long Point, according to Colonel 

 Hawkins (68th Light Infantry) and others, is wholly in banks 

 and beaches of sand, gravel, and clay. I have seen them 16 

 miles east of that river : there the under portions are greyish 

 blue, and are both amorphous and in horizontal flakes ; their 

 upper parts are of sand and primitive pebbles, capped with 

 loam, bearing oak, sumach, and elm. At the west end of 

 these cliffs, the pebbles become very large, while on the east 

 they decline into low mounds of fine sand. On the beach in 

 their front are rolled masses of greenstone, porphyry, and 

 other rocks belonging to Lake Huron. The sand on the 

 north-east shores of the lake, in such high mounds, is coarse, 

 but nearly pure. The beds of red clay in that neighbourhood, 

 however, contain many angular masses of black limestone 

 and primitive blocks ; and the beaches, here and there, have 

 large fragments of Labrador feldspar and white crystalline 

 marble. 



* Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River, vol. i. p. 141. 

 t Stickney. Silliman's Journal, vol. i. and ii. 



