256 GEOLOGY. 



Sometimes, where it is exposed at the surface, it is so mingled with 

 the Loess, Alluvium, and organic matter as to escape the attention 

 of any one save a practical geologist. It ranges in thickness from 

 a few inches to seventy-five feet. It may be much thicker, but if 

 so I have seen no exposures that indicate it. Nowhere does it come 

 to the surface over wide areas. In the northern part of the State 

 it occasionally constitutes the surface, in the southern part of Dixon 

 County, in the northern part of Wayne, and in portions of Cedar, 

 Knox, Pierce, Antelope, and Holt counties. In townships 30 and 

 and 31 north, range 1 and 2 east, in Cedar County, semicircular 

 rows of Drift pebbles and boulders even yet extend across narrow 

 valleys, that lie on the flanks of high bluffs in the form of terminal 

 moraines of glaciers, the marks of which unnumbered centuries 

 have not been able to efface. In this region some of the glacier- 

 marked boulders are of great size, weighing many tons. One of 

 the most remarkable lies near the quarter-section stone, between 

 sections 25 and 36, in township 30 north, range 1 east. It lies on 

 top of the highest bluff in this region, from which there is a mag- 

 nificent view of the whole country around. It is a granitic quartz- 

 ose rock, about four feet square. On the level top-surface there is 

 a beautiful engraving of a child's foot, a half-moon, a grape-vine, 

 and other hieroglyphics. The engraving of the child's foot is cut 

 in its deepest part, three-fourths of an inch into the hardest rock, 

 and for fidelity to nature it would do honor to the work of a Greek 

 artist. Previous to my discovery of this relic of the past (1869), no 

 one in that region had heard of its existence. It may have been 

 the work of the mound-builders, as their peculiar pottery and 

 mounds are found near by, but what implements enabled them to 

 carve these symbols in this hard rock, as well as the purpose of 

 such a monument, at such a place, will probably always remain a 

 mystery. 



South of the Platte the Drift creeps to the surface on some of 

 the hillsides of Lancaster, Saunders, Saline, Butler, Gage, Seward, 

 Johnson, Pawnee, and Jefferson counties. In fact, there are few 

 counties in the eastern part of the State where the Drift is not oc- 

 casionally exposed by denudation. Four miles northwest of Ne- 

 braska City, on the farm of Hon. J. F. Kinney, is a granitic boulder 

 as large as a small house, on whose top smooth holes have been 

 worn by the Indians in grinding or pounding corn. This boulder 

 is imbedded in a Loess deposit, through which it extends from the 



