

A TRIP TO PIPESTONE QUARRY. 651 
goes to show us the Pipestone, which deposit of aboriginal 
treasure we find in the plain an eighth of a mile west of the 
principal exposure of the rock, occupying a shallow ditch 
(B) a quarter of a mile long, and running parallel with it. 
The Pipestone is in somewhat thin and usually shaly layers, 
and only from eight to twelve inches in aggregate thickness, 
and is the lowest layer found here. The red quartzite rests 
immediately upon it, and is four or five feet thick at the 
ditch, and must be removed to get the Pipestone. This has 
been accomplished with great labor by the Indians, for they 
do not even now use suitable implements to remove it. ` The 
ditch occupies about the middle of the space referred to as- 
the plain, and from it the ground rises gently both eastward 
and westward. To the westward the rise to the general 
prairie level is uninterrupted, and no more rock is seen in 
that direction. To: the eastward the gentle rise is inter- 
` rupted by the abrupt face of the quartzite ledges, between 
which and the ditch frequent exposures of the same rock are 
seen upon the nearly level surface. The actual height from 
the Pipestone in the bottom of the ditch, which is about the 
lowest point in the vicinity, to the top of the ledges at A, 
which point is just below the general level of the prairie, is 
only forty feet, but the dip of all the rocks to the eastward 
is such as to show an actual thickness of strata amounting to 
one hundred and fifty feet. This dip causes the top ledges 
to disappear rapidly to the eastward beneath the marshy 
surface, and they are seen no more in that direction. The 
“Medicine Rocks,” (C) towards the southern end of the 
_ plain, rest directly upon the glacier-smoothed surface of the 
quartzite. We see the distinct strie beneath and around 
them, and feel almost as if we had caught them in the very 
act of making their tracks, for they are granite strangers 
from the northward, and we have visited the place where 
they were born, and know them and their generation. The 
two. largest of these boulders are some twelve or fifteen feet 
in diameter, and are the ones believed by the Indians to 
