Visit to Big-bone Lick. 355 



ent of the ridges, and for the origin of those gaps through which 

 the streams now pass. We want to know whether hy far the 

 greater portion of them have been worn, not by the action of 

 advancing streams, but by a retrocessive action, similar in nature 

 to that which has removed the Falls of Niagara from Queens- 

 town to their present station, of which we think to have given 

 the proofs in our number for July, 1831, in an article on the an- 

 cient drainage of North, America. 



It will give us a lively sactisfaction to receive sensible and 

 practical papers from our correspondents, on these interesting 

 subjects. 



VISIT TO BIG-BONE LICK, IN 1821. 

 By C. S. RAFiiTEsauE, Professor of Historical and J^atural Sciences, &c. 



Mr. Cooper, in his account of Big-bone Lick, has craved further 

 information from other explorers. I shall, perhaps, add some ad- 

 ditional facts to his. He has omitted Mr. John D. Clifford and my- 

 self among the explorers. To my knowledge Mr. Clifford visited 

 the place in 1816 or 1817, and dug for bones. He procured many, 

 which I have seen in his museum, in Lexington, among which a 

 fine tusk of mastodon, and some horns of the oxen found there. 

 His collection of bones has been removed, by purchase, to the 

 museum of Cincinnati, and latterly to the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, of Philadelphia. 



We proposed to visit this lick together in 1820; but his death 

 that year prevented us. In 1821, I went with Dr. Short, from 

 Lexington to Northbend, at the mouth of the great Miami. I left 

 him there at his brother's seat on the Ohio, and went on purpose to 

 the Lick by myself to explore it, and wait for him on his return. 

 Ahorse having been lent to me, I went by the road of Cincinnati, 

 following the banks of the Ohio. I visited in the way a beautiful 

 elliptical mound, near the banks of the river, and the house of 

 major Pratt. It has been preserved intact, with the trees that 

 grow on it. The base measures 550 feet in circumference ; it is 

 25 feet high, and the top is level 100 feet long from N. E. to S. 

 W., by 50 feet broad. This mound, or altar, is nearly half way 

 between the stone fort, at the mouth of the Miami, and the 

 ancient city, temples, circus, and mounds on which Cincinnnati 



