722 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



west, if we are intent on noticing the peculiarities of the land 

 around us we will soon see off to the southwest and rising out of 

 the nearly level plain a peculiar hill or elevation ; a butte with an 

 apparently flat top and whose slopes have a grayish color distinguish- 

 ing it completely from the red soil which covers this territory. Though 

 it may be eight or ten miles away it is still a conspicuous object not 

 from its height but from its form. It has an artificial look as if some 

 great reservoir for water storage had been built. There is no other 

 elevation near it. From Sunshine Station it is reached by a drive 

 south of about six miles, over the plain sparsely covered with vegeta- 

 tion, and with here and there outcropping fantastic forms of red rock 

 of a few feet in height. 



As we approach Coon Butte, or Meteor Crater, the impression does 

 not change except in the realization of the scale on which it exists. 

 Distances are so deceptive in the clear air of the desert that it had 

 seemed close at hand when we were still miles away. At last we reach 

 the foot of the slope and climb it to a height of about 150 feet. We 

 are now at the top looking down into a great bowl-shaped hole, the 

 upcast rim of which we had seen from afar. This rim is a nearly 

 circular ridge, very steep or even vertical on its inner part and slop- 

 ing gradually to the plain on all sides. But the thing which rivets 

 the attention is the deep cavity enclosed by this rim, comparatively 

 flat at the bottom with surrounding talus slopes from the walls, 

 in which walls are exposed various rock strata, broken, contorted, dis- 

 torted, and uplifted. The bottom of the crater is about 570 feet below 

 the rim, or more than 400 feet below the general level of the plain 

 outside. 



The sight is most impressive. The diameter of the opening is 

 roughly three quarters of a mile ; at the widest part a little over 4,200 

 feet. 



The circular hill or rim of this huge hole is composed of material 

 evidently uplifted, crushed and pulverized in part and cast out from the 

 crater. Much of it is finely pulverized white silica from a white sand- 

 stone which underlies an upper stratum of limestone. Fragments of 

 the limestone layer of all sizes are seen ; some of them very large. 

 The slope of the rim extends for about a quarter to half a mile but 

 there is scattered material three miles or more away. Blocks of lime- 

 stone and sandstone cap the ridge, ranging up to 30 feet in diameter, 

 while one block 10 feet through, is half a mile distant. The most 

 significant constituent of the upcast ridge, is, however, meteoric iron 

 in pieces of varying size, and so-called shale ball iron or oxidized 

 meteoric iron ; — oxidized because in its composition there was chlorine 



