218 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



were involved in one common rain with the trees which bore them, these having 

 been torn up by the roots, and twisted and split into a thousand pieces, appa- 

 rently by lightning, combined with a tremendous tempest or tornado. There 

 was no sign or indication of any very large trees, the cypresses that were dis- 

 covered being the largest that were growing here at the time. Through this 

 stratum ran several veins of iron-ore — sufficient evidence of the antiquity of 

 this deposit. Immediately over this was one of blue clay, three feet in thick- 

 ness ; the next was one of gravel from nine to eighteen inches in thickness, so 

 hard compressed together that it resembled pudding-stone ; the next was a 

 layer of light blue clay, from three to four feet in thickness ; on this was ano- 

 ther stratum of gravel, of the same thickness and appearance as the one first 

 mentioned ; this was succeeded by a layer of yellowish clay, from two to three 

 feet in thickness ; over this, a third layer of gravel, of the same appearance and 

 thickness ; and, at last, the present surface, consisting of a brownish clay, min- 

 gled with a few pebbles, and covered with large oak, maple, and elm trees, 

 which were, as near as I could ascertain, from eighty to a hundred years old. 

 In the centre of the above-mentioned deposit was a large spring which 

 appeared to rise from the very bowels of the earth, as it was never affected by 

 the severest rain, nor did it become lower by the longest drought. About two 

 hundred yards from said deposit stands a singularly formed rock, which not 

 only bears the appearance, but may be considered as a monument of great 

 antiquity, formed by nature, against whose rough and rugged sides can be dis- 

 tinctly traced, in deep and furrowed lines, the former course of angry waters ; 

 yet its summit is full thirty feet above the present level of the Pomme de Terre. 

 The rock has the appearance of a pillar, on whose top rests a table rock far 

 projecting over on every side ; from the base of the pillar to the lower edge of 

 the table is thirty feet, and from the base down to the deposit of the bones 

 is sixteen feet — making, from the stratum on which the bones were 

 deposited to the edge of the table, forty-six feet. By a minute and close ex- 

 amination, I found that the formation of the said rock, as it now appears, was 

 produced by the long action of the river against and around it ; and had the 

 river continued to act with the same force for one or two hundred years longer, 

 the pillar would have been so far worn away, that the table must have fallen. 

 It now stands as an indisputable witness, that the water, at the time these 

 animals existed, was at least forty-six feet in depth. It is perfectly true that 

 we cannot with any degree of certainty depend on Indian traditions 5 but it is 

 equally true that generally these traditions are founded on events which have 

 actually transpired, and according to their importance in relation to the welfare 

 of the aborigines among whom they occurred, and in absence of any better 

 niethodof perpetuating, are transmitted with great care in their legends from 

 generation to generation ; but in the course of time, as might reasonably be 

 expected, these traditions lose much in correctness and minuteness of detail, 

 owing to the circumstances, more or less, in which the tribes have been placed. 

 As I ;un constrained to confine my remarks within very circumscribed limits, 

 I \\ ill only relate one of the traditions having reference to the existence of the 

 before-described animal; this one, however, led principally to its discovery. 

 At the time when the first white settlers emigrated to the Osage country 

 (as this seel ion of territory is usually called), it was inhabited by "the Osage 

 Indians, and the river by which it is watered was called the Big Bone river, 

 owing to a tradition preserved by them, which they stated as follows : — There 

 was a time when the Indians paddled their canoes over the now extensive 

 prairies of Missouri, and encamped or hunted on the bluffs. (These bluffs 

 vary from fifty to four hundred feec in perpendicular height.) That at a cer- 

 tain period many large and monstrous animals came from the eastward, along 

 'in! up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers; upon which the animals that had 



