560 APPENDIX. 



therefore beg leave, througli you, to submit tliese subjects to the 

 consideration of the honorable the Secretary of War, with every 

 distrust in rny own powers of observation, and with a very full 

 confidence in his. 



I have the honor to be, sir. 



Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 



H. E. SCHOOLCEAFT. 

 To Elbeet Herring, Esq., Com. Lid. Affairs. 



2. Brief Notes of a Tour in 1831, from Galena, in Illinois, to Fort 

 Winnebago, on the source of Fox River, Wisconsin. By Henry 

 E. Schoolcraft. 



Time admonishes me of my promise to furnish you some 

 account of my journey from Galena to Fort Winnebago. But I 

 confess, that time has taken away none of those features which 

 make me regard it as a task. Other objects have occupied so 

 much of my thoughts, that the subject has lost some of its vivid- 

 ness, and I shall be obliged to confine myself more exclusively 

 to my notes than I had intended. This will be particularly true 

 in speaking of geological facts. Geographical features impress 

 themselves strongly on the mind. The shape of a mountain is 

 not easily forgotten, and its relation to contiguous waters and 

 woods is recollected after the lapse of many years. The succes- 

 sion of plains, streams, and settlements is likewise retained in the 

 memory, while the peculiar plains, the soils overlaying them, and 

 all the variety of their mineral and organic contents, require to 

 be perpetuated by specimens and by notes, which impose neither 

 a slight nor a momentary labor. 



Limited sketches of this kind are, furthermore, liable to be mis- 

 conceived. Prominent external objects can only be brought to 

 mind, and these often reveal but an imperfect notion of the per- 

 vading character of strata, and still less knowledge of their mine- 

 ral contents. Haste takes away many opportunities of observa- 

 tion ; and scanty or inconvenient means of transporting hand 

 specimens, often deprive us of the requisite data. Indeed, I 

 should be loath to describe the few facts I am about to communi- 

 cate, had you not personally visited and examined the great 

 carboniferous and sandstone formation on the Mississippi and 



