PRODUCTIONS, &c.—BOOK I. 
65 
tract of about sixty miles in length, ancl twenty in breadth: and 
those at the Ouisconsing, on the Mississippi, above the prairie 
du Cliien. I reserve the description of the first for a separate 
number. The mines of the prairie du Cliien, are still in the 
hands of the Sacs and Foxes, and wrought by themselves ex¬ 
clusively; but in a very imperfect manner. Last year ( 1811 ) 
they made about five hundred thousand Weight, which they 
disposed of to traders. By some, these mines have been con¬ 
sidered the richest yet opened. The Indians are badly provi¬ 
ded with tools for mining; a common hoe is almost the only 
instrument which they use. They merely scratch away the soil 
a few feet, and the ore may be said without exaggeration, to be 
raised, in the manner of stones in a quarry. The mode of 
smelting is equally rude. The ore is thrown on piles of wood, 
and the lead is afterwards gathered up in cakes, in the shapes 
and forms, assumed by melted lead, when carelessly thrown 
out on a hearth. It is afterwards melted by the traders, and made 
into pigs by the use of moulds. 
West of the tract of lead mineral, is that of the salines: If 
runs parallel with the other, but goes further south, and not so 
far north. The extent is not Weil known. This tract affords 
the most numerous and best salines, of any part of North Ame¬ 
rica. The number, on the Arkansas and on the Osage is surprise 
ingly great. At the salines on the last river, there is a greater 
number of the enormous bones of the mammoth, and of other 
animals, now extinct, than at the Big Bone Lick, or in any other 
part of America.* I have already touched upon the extraordina- 
* I am informed about two hundred miles west of St. Louis. No col¬ 
lection has yet been made from this place. The bones are found in some 
places on the surface of the earth, and generally a few feet under 
ground. 
A prevailing notion, the origin of which is attributed to the cele¬ 
brated anatomist, Cuvier, is, that these hones belong to a creation dif¬ 
ferent from the present. They are found in all parts of the world, and 
of a great variety of species, some even resembling those of the prer- 
Sent creation, but of much greater magnitude. In South America, near 
Buenos Ayres, the skeleton of a sloth is said to have been dug up, near¬ 
ly as large as that of an elephant. Cuvier discovered in the vicinity of 
Paris, bones which appertained to a race of animals now extinct. Font? 
l 
