60 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Featherstonhaugh, 1835. 



Indians concurred in saying that there were some bluffs a few miles beyond 

 the St. Peter's where they procured a blue earth with which to paint them- 

 selves; and this point was so precisely described that he had no difficulty 

 in finding it. In passing up he evidently regarded the Le Sueur as the main 

 stream, and refers to the fork now styled the Blue Earth, as " a fork of the 

 river from the left bank." This he ascended, finding little current, and at a 

 place estimated at two miles from the fork, came to a bluff about 150 feet 

 high on the left bank, containing the blue-earth locality. "On climbing it 

 I found the same horizontal limestone and siliceous sandstone common to 

 the whole country. Toward the top was a broad seam of bluish clay inter- 

 mixed in places with silicate of iron, being a continuation of the deposit I 

 had seen before at Myakah, and valuable only for the savages to paint them- 

 selves with. From this bluff I advanced in a westerly direction about two 

 miles, over a part of the country grown up with small poplars, hazels, wild 

 roses and grass, in the hope of seeing the Coteau des Prairies, and of making 

 arrangements to proceed to it from this quarter; but I saw nothing of the 

 kind from any eminence which I could gain, and having in my hand, and 

 reading on the spot, what had been said by M. Le Sueur, his mountains and 

 his copper mines, I found myself obliged to come to the conclusion that 

 these discoveries were fables invented to give himself influence at the court 

 of France. Before I left the northwest country, and after I had visited the 

 Coteau des Prairies, I found it was distant at least sixty miles from this spot, 

 which leaves only the bluffs of the river to represent the mountains spoken 

 of in the manuscript of La Harpe."* 



Twenty miles above the mouth of the Blue Earth, he states that the 

 Minnesota " has made a recent cut-off and abandoned its old bed ; not far 

 from this place a large mass of sandstone is in place in the middle of the 

 river." Swan lake lies nearly five miles north of this place. 



FEATHERSTONHAUGH DESCRIBES THE QUARTZYTE AT REDSTONE. 



"About twenty-five miles above Makato some red earth bluffs occur 

 on the left bank, with numerous boulders. From this point the general 

 appearance of the soil and country begins to vary, and announces a change 



The deposit containing the pigment he places in that seam "which divides the limestone from the sandstone," 

 when describing this locality in the ' Canoe Voyage." 



