THE MISSOURI RIVER JOURNALS 1 77 



on fire, and now and then portions of them gave way, by 

 hundreds of tons at a time. In one place I saw a vein of 

 coal on fire ; we were following a path close to the foot of 

 a high hill, and at a turn as we looked ahead, we found 

 the way suddenly blocked by the earth falling down from 

 above us, and looking up saw a line of coal, or other dark 

 substance; it was about two feet thick, and about sev- 

 enty-five feet from the bottom and forty from the top. It 

 was burning very slowly, and in several places, for about 

 fifty yards, emitting whitish smoke, something like sul- 

 phur when burning, and turning the earth or rock above, 

 quite red, or of a brick color. It would undermine the 

 earth above, which then fell in large masses, and this was 

 the cause of the obstruction in the path before us. It 

 must have been burning for a long time, as it had already 

 burned some distance along the hill, and hundreds of tons 

 of earth had fallen. In some places I saw banks of clay 

 twenty feet high, quite red, hard in some parts, and in 

 others very scaly and soft, even crumbling to pieces. 

 Where the fire was burning, the clay was red, varying 

 from one to three feet in thickness ; no appearance of coal 

 presented itself where the fire had passed along and was 

 extinguished, but very distinct above the fire, and I have 

 no doubt there is a small quantity of sulphur mixed with 

 this coal, or whatever the substance may be. In another 

 place a short distance from these hills, and in a ravine, I 

 also saw some red stones which looked very much as if 

 the corners of a house which had once been there still 

 remained, with the remnants of two sides yet straight. 

 These stones varied from six to twenty inches in thick- 

 ness, and many of them were square and about eighteen 

 or twenty feet high; we had not time to remain and 

 examine and measure as carefully as I should have liked 

 to do." 



VOL. II. — 12 



