Bringier on the Region of the Mississippi, SfC. 2^1 



and the hones have been found so good in the States, to 

 which four hundred pounds were taken last year, that the 

 same man who discovered the quarry is now loading a flat 

 boat with them. He sold the first at one and two dollars 

 per pound. Those taken out of the lower strata are of a 

 coarser grain, and are found by the carpenters who use 

 them much superior to those imported from Turkey. 

 Some are red, some of a flesh colour, others transparent 

 with a greyish blue cast. They have a sparry texture ; 

 they seem to be an aggregate of siliceous argillaceous and 

 magnesian earths, with a little oxid of iron. 



Salt, Sand Hills, S^c. 



On the opposite side, I mean six miles below the cove, 

 (the hone quarry is above the cove) there is a salt work ; 

 it makes a great quantity of salt, which is sold at one 

 dollar per bushel. They could make any quantity, the wa- 

 ter is so far saturated that it yields one fifteenth of salt; but 

 there are salt springs on the Arkansas that yield one sixth 

 of salt ; and higher still there are streams of a sufiicient size 

 for a boat to navigate in, coming out of a lake called lake 

 Jefferson, which is a saturated solution of salt. This water 

 is of a bright red, taking its colour from cinnabar or quick- 

 silver mines, which are very plenty on the Canadian, 

 Large blocks of rock salt of the same colour are found in the 

 crevices of the mountains eastward of these lakes. There 

 are three in a range ; their beds are a solid mass of muriate 

 of soda, and beyond them are immense plains where the 

 eye beholds nothing but naked hills of light flat sand, mix- 

 ed Vv'ith the fragments of snails, and perhaps marine shells 

 pulverised like wheat bran. These hills move about ac- 

 cording as the wind directs them, sometimes eight or ten 

 miles or more at a time. They are impassable ; one would 

 sink in them as in ashes. 



The north side of the Arkansas exhibits a prairie coun- 

 try having all the characters of a mineral region.* 



* It is inhabited by innumerable herdsof Buffaloes, wild liorse?,wiid goats- 

 (Berindos) prairie wolves and common ones. There are also, it is said, prai- 

 rie dogs, called by some republican dogs, on account ot iheir living in large 

 families, and having, according to popular impression, watches placed round 

 their encampment. They burrow under ground, and when they come oat 

 of their lioles, which theyaln'nys evacuate in a body when thp sentrio? 



