136 Feather stonhaugh''s Geological Report. 



with fuci, and in some beds producta form almost the body of 

 the rock. These fossiliferous beds are separated from the 

 great sandstone beds of the country, which here go far below 

 the level of the river, by a thick stratum of eighteen feet of 

 compact subcrystalline limestone without fossils. Below this 

 stratum nothing but sandstone appears.* The fossiliferous 

 beds are accessible in numerous localities as far as the falls of 

 St. Anthony. A stream which runs from Lake Calhoun — a 

 beautiful sheet of water, about eight miles from the fort — to the 

 Mississippi, has worn its way back through the rocks from the 

 river a short distance, and makes a fall there about fifty feet 

 high, the stream being twenty feet broad. I obtained many 

 fine fossils at this place, as well as at both banks of the Mis- 

 sissippi, up which I went to the falls of St. Anthony, a dis- 

 tance not much exceeding eight miles by w^ater, and the 

 banks not exceeding eighty-five feet, to the flat prairie land of 

 the country. 



An island about 450 yards long divides the Mississippi into 

 two parts at the falls of St. Anthony, which have a very 

 irregular outline, owing to the soft sandstone being washed 

 out unequally in places, and the superincumbent strata of 

 limestone falling down in large blocks ; fhese are piled up in 

 great quantities on the bed of the river immediately at the 

 foot of the falls. That part of the river on the north side of 

 the island is about two hundred and twenty yards in width. 

 There is a very fine smooth section of the rocks here to the 

 w^ater, about 90 feet high.. I should think the fall would not 

 average more than twenty feet. ' The immense slabs which 



* In Mr. Keating's narrative of Major Long's expedition to the source of St. 

 Peter's river, before referred to, it is stated, vol. ], page 308, that this sandstone 

 rests upon a slaty limestone, with a striped aspect, and that again upon other calca- 

 reous beds lying beneath the water level. This error is to be attributed to a hasty 

 examination. At the bottom of the talus are heavy blocks of limestone, many of 

 which lie flat in the river, but they have all fallen from the top. I not only com- 

 pared and identified them, but examined the sandstone often at leisure, and it is 

 never superincumbent to any bed of limestone there, descending much further 

 below the water-level than it was possible to examine it. 



