A TRIP TO PIPESTONE QUARRY. g 649 
sumed, or we shall have no camp-fire at the Pipestone, where 
` we must pass the night. 
On we go, after a hasty meal, for twenty miles of our 
journey is yet to be made, and we lose sight of the only tree 
we shall see until we return to the fort. There is nothing 
around us or beneath us but the gently undulating prairie 
with its dense growth of grass and, flowers, and nothing 
above us but the open sky. Twice or thrice we detect small 
exposures of the red quartzite in the depressions occupied 
by the small prairie streams, with their surfaces scored by 
the boulder-laden glaciers which moved over them long ago. 
Now and then a solitary boulder, fellows of those that scored 
the surfaces of the rocks in place, peers up out of the rich 
loamy soil. Now and then the whitening skull of a buffalo, 
or tbe huge cast-off antlers of an elk, partially hidden by 
the rank grass, arrests our attention, but these are familiar 
things, and we pass the time in conversation upon various 
topics until late in the afternoon, when our guide halts upon 
an ‘eminence before us. Upon coming up, he merely says 
“Pipestone” as he points forward, and there, three miles 
away in the distance, is the famous spot. 
We had not expected to see conspicuous features of the 
landscape anywhere in such a region as this, and yet we 
were somewhat disappointed to find that the narrow ledge 
of rocks in the broad shallow valley of a little prairie creek, 
lying entirely below the general prairie level, constitutes all 
there is of the Great Pipestone Quarry. As far as the eye 
can reach in every direction, no “mountain of the prairie,” 
no grove, no tree, no habitation, no living thing except a 
few birds, is in sight. From our maps and Government 
surveys, we know the spot is within the State of Minnesota, 
about thirty miles in a direct line from its south-western 
corner, and three or four miles from its western boundary. 
_ Approaching it, the exposure of rocks appears much greater 
than it did in the distance, when it looked like a mere line 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. I. 82 
