54 [Senate 



gcnptlon i more especially as I have recently obtained evidence sufficiently 

 conclusive touching its precise geological character. 



'' The best information I can furnish in regard to the exact spot of its 

 original location, and the circumstances by which it came into the posses- 

 sion of Mr. Rapp, is to be found in the subjoined extract from a letter 

 written by the gentleman under whose inspection it was quarried, then a 

 resident of St, Louis, but now of Cincinnati,. Mr. Paul Anderson. 

 This letter is dated October 11, 1841, and is a reply to one which I 

 addressed, in the course of last autumn, to Mr. Baker, Mr. Rapp's man 

 of business, who was a resident of Harmony at the time of the purchase, 

 and in which I had requested of him to procure for me what information 

 he could on the subject. 



" Mr, Anderson, writing to Mr. Baker., says : 



'"The letter of Mr, David Dale Owen, of the 26th ult,, enclosed ia 

 yours of the 8th inst., was duly received by me here. 



"'Well sir, as to the limestone slab that Mr. Frederick Eapf 

 obtained of me sometime in 1819 at St. Louis, I will tell you its history. 

 The year after I was located in St. Louis, during the extreme low water 

 of the Mississippi, I was shown the imprint of human feet, that was in the 

 limestone rock on the very margin of the river, and which had been only 

 seen by the old inhabitants there very few times ; as it was said by them 

 that it was not more than once in the period of ten years or so, that the 

 river fell to its then stage. This rock lay about opposite the center of the 

 city proper, and seemed to have been polished smooth by the attrition of 

 the water. There was no rock lying on it, as it was the lower ledge of the 

 stratified limestone that reached, by steps, to the bluff of limestone rock 

 that ranged along the foot of the river lots of the city. This bluff of stra- 

 tified rock was seemingly from ten to twenty feet high, and from twenty 

 to forty yards from the margin of the river at extreme low water mark, 

 all along the city. This bluff has been quarried out, and a fine range of 

 three story stone warehouses erected there on the river front. A street^ 

 too, of sixty feet wide has been laid off, besides a graduated macadamized 

 wharf on the outside of that again to low water mark. 



" 'A Mr. John Jones, who claimed a sort of ownership in the rock a? 

 being the first discoverer of it that season, was employed by me to cut 

 out the slab for Mr. Frederick Rapp, who was then at St. Louis on u 

 business visit. I paid JoNES ( to the best of my recollection ) one hundred 

 and eighty dollars for the slab, and shipped it around to New-Harmony, 

 to Mr. Rapp.' 



"These extracts fully explain the circumstances under which the slab 

 was originally obtained by Mr. Rapp, When that gentleman, in the year 



