140 Journey to the Céteau des Prairies, &§c. 
tiful prairie countries in the world, for the distance of one hundred 
and twenty or one hundred and thirty miles, which brought us to 
the base of the Coteau. This immense tract of country which 
we had passed over, as well as that along the St. Peter’s River, 
is every where covered with the richest soil, and furnishes an 
abundance of good water, which flows from a thousand living 
springs. For many miles in the distance before us we had the 
Céteau in view, which looked like a blue cloud settling down 
in the horizon; and when we had arrived at its base, we were 
scarcely sensible of the fact from the graceful and almost imper- 
ceptible swells with which it commences its elevation above the 
country about it. Over these swells or terraces, gently rising one 
above the other, we travelled for the distance of forty or fifty miles, 
when we at length reached the summit, and also the Pipe Stone 
quarry, the object of our campaign. From the base of this magic 
mound to its top, a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not 
a tree or a bush to be seen in any direction ; the ground was every 
where covered with a green turf of grass about five or six inches 
high ; and we were assured by our Indian guide that it descended 
to the west, towards the Missouri, with a similar inclination, and 
for an equal distance, divested of every thing save the grass that 
grows and the animals that walk upon it. ae 
On the very top of this mound or ridge, we found the far famed 
quarry or fountain of the Red Pipe, which is truly an anomaly ‘ 
in nature. The principal and most striking feature of this place 
is a perpendicular wall of close grained, compact quartz, of twenty — 
five or thirty feet in elevation, running nearly north and south 
with its face to the west, exhibiting a front of nearly two miles in 
length, when it disappears at both ends by running under the 
prairie, which becomes there a little more elevated, and probably 
covers it for many miles, both to the north and the south. The 
depression of the brow of the ridge at this place has been caused 
by the wash of a little stream produced by several springs on the 
top of the ridge, alittle back from the wall, which has gradually 
carried away the superincumbent earth, and having bared the wall 
for the distance of two miles, is now left to glide for some distance _ 
over a perfectly level surface of quartz rock, and then to leap from 
the top of the wall into a deep basin below, and from thence seek 
its course to the Missouri, forming the extreme source of a noted 
and powerful tributary, called the “ Big Sioux.” 
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