FS ee rn ee 
Miscellaneous Facts. 13 
led with horses at two thousand miles, while my companions con- 
sidered it much greater; the distance up the Missouri and down the 
Columbia, travelled by water, at seven or eight hundred miles; 
therefore the whole distance travelled, from St. Louis, was about 
twenty eight hundred—one thousand more than the direct distance. 
The distance I travelled by land, was, in all, say five thousand, and 
by water, twenty thousand, equal to twenty five thousand, or the 
entire circumference of the globe 
Rocks, Springs and Physical features. 
As to the rocks, you have, I presume, specimens from the Sand- 
wich or Society Islands ; for, although I have said that there is no 
appearance of craters, on the continent; still the general aspect of 
the rock, is often precisely the same as in those Islands—black po- 
rous masses of a specific gravity little less than granite—is it not 
amygdaloid? The basalt on the Columbia more resembles the 
specimens of the Giant’s Causeway, than the rock on the west of 
the Hudson, the Palisadoes, and that near your residence at New 
Haven. In fact, all the rocks show much stronger marks of igni- 
tion. I brought a few small specimens, which I wish you could 
see. I saw no currents of lava, or masses flowing through vallies, 
unless the columnar basalt, resting, sometimes on sand, along the 
Lewis and Columbia rivers, are to be considered such. I saw no 
pumice stone, but what I spoke of as cinders or scorie, would per- 
haps, be better described as resembling almost precisely over burnt 
brick or earthen ware. At the top of the deep ravines through which 
the creeks ran, the rocks sometimes presented that appearance, as 
though it there underwent the greatest heat. I do not recollect that 
I saw any dykes or walls of trap or lava or basalt, presenting an ap- 
pearance as though intruded through other rock, or any voleanic cra- 
ters or balls or lips of eruption-shapes or forms, except Mount Hood, 
&c. Learnestly wish it were in my power to describe the country 
so that you could see it, for it is well worth seeing. 
The rock often had a vitrified appearance, and although not ex- 
actly tumefied, it presented pores of all dimensions, even to the ca- 
pacity of twenty gallons; these cavities are of a kettle form—and 
the rock that was burnt differed as much from that which was not, 
as burnt brick or earthen from the clay from which they are made, 
or glass from the silex. Sometimes! thought the rock to be basalt, 
which, on the slightest examination, could be seen to be, at least in 
