HISTORICAL SKETCH. 59 



1835, Feathentonhiugh.] 



a strong current. Above this is another rapid, with sandstone in place on 

 the right bank, the same as at the fort." This is probably the rapid near 

 Carver. 



Further up the Bois Franc district, a stream comes in from the left bank called Wee-tah 

 Wakatah, or Tall island,* and about five miles higher up some ledges of horizontal fawn-colored 

 limestone jut out on the right bank, very cherty and somewhat vesicular ; near the surface it takes a 

 reddish salmon-color, resembling very much some beds I had previously seen on the Wisconsin and 

 upper Mississippi. Within a few yards of these ledges, and north of them, a beautiful pellucid stream 

 comes in, containing the purest water I had seen in the country. 1 could not learn that any name 

 had been given to it, and as it is in the immediate vicinity of the first calcareous rock I had met 

 with in place here, and its purity rendering it a very rare stream in a country where all are turbid, 

 I named it Abert's run, after Col. Abert, of the United States army, and chief of the topographi- 

 cal bureau.t 



Eight or nine miles below Traverse des Sioux is Myah Skah, or White 

 Rock,:}: where he mentions an escarpment consisting of forty feet of granular 

 sandstone surmounted by ten feet of fawn-colored limestone, the same as 

 that at Abert's run. This sandstone, he says, is formed of semi-transparent 

 grains loosely adhering, with nodules here and there, where they are 

 cemented by a paste of clear siliceous matter; the whole making a hard 

 flinty mass resembling siliceous oolite. At the j unction of the limestone with 

 the sandstone he notes a seam of marly, mineral matter " containing a great 

 deal of silicate of iron," of a bluish - green color. About two miles above 

 Moon creek (or camp Crescent, of Keating) he saw the sandstone and lime- 

 stone again in place ; again, at a point three miles higher, a long bluff 

 twenty-five feet in hight. Five miles further the White Earth bluff occurs, 

 where he mentions multitudes of large boulders on the prairie, some of 

 which he estimates at 100 tons' weight. Beyond this point, having passed 

 an island about 400 yards long, the current becoming very strong, with bold 

 bluffs and many boulders, he judged that the river had worked its way 

 through a ridge. Sixteen miles beyond this point he estimated the bluffs 

 at 150 feet in hight, and found the current of the river swift, this being near 

 the mouth of the Makato, or Blue Earth river. 



In searching for the supposed copper mines of Le Sueur, under the 

 guidance of his interpeter, Milor, he could ascertain nothing, not even a 

 traditional report, of anything like a copper mine in that region. The 



* High Island creek, four miles north of Henderson. 



f The inaccuracies of Mr. Fcatherstonhaugh's description, even with the aid of his small map. render it impossible 

 to state what stream is here meant ; but the bluff of rock seems to be that situated at Rocky point, Sec. 30, Blakely. 



: Near Ottawa. 



\ Keating ascribes the name Crucenttoa, bend in the Minnesota river, but Mr. Featherstonhaugh says it Is due to a 

 eries of half-moon turns in the little creek that enters from the east a short distance below the Traverse des Sioux. 



