7 
16 Human Foot-Prints in Solid Limestone. 
into the possession of Mr. Rapp, is to be found in the subjoined es ex- j 
tracts from a letter written by the gentleman under whose insp 
tion it was quarried, then a resident of St. Louis, but now of © 
Cincinnati, Mr. Paul Anderson. This letter is dated October 11, ’ 
1841, and is in reply to one which L addressed, in the course of 
last autumn to Mr. Baker, Mr. — maui of business, who was — 
e of the purchase, and in which © 
for me what talorniotiociay 
could on the subject. 
Mr. Anderson writing to Mr. Bidets says: £ 
“The letter of Mr. David Dale Owen, of the 20th ult. enclosed ] 
in yours of the Sth inst. was duly received by me here. : 
« Well, sir, as to the limestone slab that Mr. Frederick Rapp ~ 
obtained of me sometime in 1819 at St. Louis, I will tell you its — 
history. The year after I was located in St. Louis, during the ex- | 
treme low water of the Mississippi, I was shown the imprint of hu- ~ 
man feet, that was in the limestone rock on the very margin of the — 
river, and which had been only seen. by the old iuthabitanies there — 
very few times; as it was said by them that it was not more than 
once in the period of ten years or so, that the river fell toits then ~ 
stage. This rock lay about opposite the centre of the city proper, | 
and seemed to have been polished smooth by the attrition of the | 
water. There was no rock lying on it, as it was the lower ledge — 
of the stratified limestone that reached, by steps, to the bluff of — 
limestone rock that ranged along the foot of the river lots of the a 
city. This bluff of stratified rock was seemingly from ten to — 
twenty feet high, and from twenty to forty yards from the mar=_ 1 
gin of the river at extreme low water mark, all along the eity. | 
This bluff has been quarried out and a fine range of three story. 
‘stone warehouses erected there on the river front. A street, too, 
= sixty feet wide has been laid off, besides'a graduated McAd- — 
ul wharf on the outside of that again to low-water mark. 
A Mr John Jones, who claimed a sort of ownership in the _ 
rock as being the first discoverer of it that season, was employed — 
by me to cut out the slab for Mr. Frederick Rapp, who was then — 
at St. Louis on a business visit. J paid Jones (to the best of my 
aarp one —— and raced dollars for gr slab, 
sr a to soins oF she ao 
eee ea ae Pa 
