Featherstonhaugh^s Geological Report. 



135 



stone bluff, with a narrow ravine, down which trickles a small 

 stream of good water. I followed this ravine about 200 

 paces, and found that it led to the cave which Carver has so 

 accurately described.* The Nacotah Indians call it Wakon 

 Teebee, or House of the Gi eat Spirit. The ravine ends at a 

 circular wall of very soft sandstone, about forty feet high to 

 the left ; to the right is the cave, the entrance to which is 

 formed by an arch about eighteen feet high, and thirty feet 

 wide. The stream of water comes through this cave, into 

 which I advanced about forty paces, when the water became 

 too deep. I heard a rumbling sound, at a distance, of falling 

 water, and threw stones in at random, it being dark, which 

 fell into deep water, as I could ascertain by the sound. After 

 advancing a few paces into the cave it loses its dimensions, 

 being little more than six feet high and about ten feet wide. 

 The rock is composed of a white crumbling sandstone, easily 

 cut with a knife. The cave, like most others, appears to owe 

 its origin to a spring of water which passes through it. The 

 Indians have cut many of their hieroglyphics upon the rock. 

 Five miles beyond this cave the Minnay Sotor Watapah or 

 St. Peter's river comes into the Mississippi on the right bank ; 

 and, a short distance above, at a cut-off which the Mississippi 

 has made by forcing its way through the alluvial bottom to the 

 St. Peter's, Fort Shelling appears, at the top of the escarp- 

 ment, on the right bank of the Mississippi. 



This is the last military post of the United States to the 

 northwest, the natives having exclusive possession of the 

 country as far as the British settlements, about latitude 49 

 degrees. The fort is built upon the bluff, which overlooks 

 both the Mississippi and the St. Peter's, resting upon grayish, 

 buff-colored, fossiliferous beds of the carboniferous limestone, 

 containing zoophytes, many specimens of large orthocera, 

 fragments of which measured a foot long and more than four 

 inches wide. The faces of some of the rocks are covered 



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