694 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



logical account of the lower valley of the St. Louis River. The 

 rock at the Falls of St. Anthony he considered Lower Carbonif- 

 erous; i. e., of the same age as the lead-bearing Mountain Lime- 

 stone of England. In 1832 he discovered the source of the 

 Mississippi River and named it Lake Itasca, an imaginary name 

 of an imaginary Indian divinity, constructed by him for the 

 occasion from the two Latin words Veritas, truth, or true, and 

 caput, head, by taking two syllables of the former and one of 

 the latter. By this he intended to indicate that Lake Itasca is 

 the true head of the Mississippi. Beyond this signal discovery 

 and a picture of the Falls of St. Anthony, Schoolcraft added 

 but little to the geography or geology of the state. He should, 

 however, have credit for noting the occurrence of crystalline 

 rocks at several points in the Mississippi River below the Falls 

 of Pokegama. 



Keating's narrative of Major Long's expedition in 1823 to 

 the source of the St. Peter's River contains much on the geology 

 of the route. Besides an account of the Falls of St. Anthony, 

 Professor Keating gives the first geological description of the val- 

 ley of the Minnesota River (then called St. Peter's) and of the 

 cote an des prairies. Descending the Red River of the North to 

 Winnipeg, this party turned eastward, crossed the Lake of the 

 Woods, ascending Rainy River and Rainy Lake, thence following 

 the international boundary line to the east end of Sturgeon Island 

 where they turned more northward, in order to reach Fort Wil- 

 liam by another route. Keating was a chemist and a mineralogist, 

 and his notes on the crystalline rocks of the route afford the first 

 instance of the application of the correct and careful methods of 

 modern science to the investigation of the geology of the state. 

 It was a reconnoissance simply, and but few facts could be noted, 

 but such as they are they have been found, in the main, to be 

 reliable. 



Lieutenant James Allen, who accompanied Schoolcraft in 1832, 

 rendered an independent report of the expedition, in which he 

 gives brief descriptions of the topography and general features, 

 including the dalles of trap-rock on the St. Croix river. 



