218 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
were involved in one common ruin with tlie 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 — suf&cient 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 gi-avel, 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 fm-rowed lines, the former coui'se 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 hundi-ed 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 ; 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 
method of perpetuating, are transmitted with great care in their legends from 
generation to generation ; but in the coui'se of time, as might reasonably be 
expected, these traditions lose much in correctness and minuteness of detail, 
owing to tlie cii-cumstauces, more or less, in which the tribes have been placed. 
As I am constrained to confine my remarks within very circumscribed limits, 
I wiU 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 section 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 tlie 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 
and up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers ; upon which the animals that had 
