140 Journey to the Coteau des Prairies, ^c. 



tiful prairie countries in the world, for the distance of one hundred 

 and twenty or one hundred and thirty miles, which brought us to 

 the base of the Coteau. This immense tract of country which 

 we had passed over, as well as that along the St. Peter's River, 

 is every where covered with the richest soil, and furnishes an 

 abundance of good water, which flows from a thousand living 

 springs. For many miles in the distance before us we had the 

 Coteau in view, which looked like a blue cloud settling down 

 in the horizon ; and when we had arrived at its base, we were 

 scarcely sensible of the fact from the graceful and almost imper- 

 ceptible swells with which it commences its elevation above the 

 country about it. Over these swells or terraces, gently rising one 

 above the other, we travelled for the distance of forty or fifty miles, 

 when we at length reached the summit, and also the Pipe Stone 

 quarry, the object of our campaign. From the base of this magic 

 mound to its top, a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not 

 a tree or a bush to be seen in any direction ; the ground was every 

 where covered with a green turf of grass about five or six inches 

 high ; and we were assured by our Indian guide that it descended 

 to the west, towards the Missouri, with a similar inclination, and 

 for an equal distance, divested of every thing save the grass that 

 grows and the animals that walk upon it. 



On the very top of this mound or ridge, we found the far famed 

 quarry or fountain of the Red Pipe, which is truly an anomaly 

 in nature. The principal and most striking feature of this place 

 is a perpendicular wall of close grained, compact quartz, of twenty 

 five or thirty feet in elevation, running nearly north and south 

 with its face to the west, exhibiting a front of nearly two miles in 

 length, when it disappears at both ends by running under the 

 prairie, which becomes there a little more elevated, and probably 

 covers it for many miles, both to the north and the south. The 

 depression of the brow of the ridge at this place has been caused 

 by the wash of a little stream produced by several springs on the 

 top of the ridge, a little back from the wall, which has gradually 

 carried away the superincumbent earth, and having bared the wall 

 for the distance of two miles, is now left to glide for some distance 

 over a perfectly level surface of quartz rock, and then to leap from 

 the top of the wall into a deep basin below, and from thence seek 

 its course to the Missouri, forming the extreme source of a noted 

 and powerful tributary, called the " Big Sioux." 



