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the rocky mountains; the horns of a mountain-ram, and those of 
an elk, several bearskins, among others, of the white bear; buf¬ 
falo, elk, of the skunk, which were sowed together in a robe, 
skins of martins, ferrets, &c. &c. moreover, several petrifactions 
of wood, and animal subjects, among others, of elephants teeth, a 
piece of rock-salt, tolerably white, yet not shooting in crystals, 
as the English; various crystals; a large piece of rock crystal; 
very handsome small agates, which are here taken for cornelians, 
&c. Among the curiosities, the most remarkable were two ca¬ 
noes,, the one of animal-hide, the other of tree-bark, a peace-belt, 
which consists of a white girdle, set with glass beads two hands 
breadth wide; farther, snow shoes, nets which are : drawn over 
an oval frame, also the rackets, which they use in playing their 
game of ball, &c. &c. 
After the examination of this interesting collection, we paid 
our visit to Mr. Choteau. This is a venerable old man of eighty 
years, a native of New Orleans. He told us that at the founding 
of St. Louis, he felled the first tree. His house resembling in 
architecture the old government-house in New Orleans, was the 
first substantial building erected here. The conversation with 
this aged man, who received us like a patriarch, surrounded by 
his descendants, was very interesting. He was of opinion that 
the people from whom the Indian antiquities have come down to 
us, either by a pestilential disease, or by an all-destroying war, 
must have been blotted from the earth. He believed that Beh¬ 
ring’s Straits were more practicable formerly than at present, at 
least it must have been Asiatic hordes that came to America. 
How otherwise, (asked he,) could the elephants, since there have 
been none ever upon this continent, have reached the American 
bottom, where their bones are now found? This bottom is a very 
rich body of land, running south, opposite to St. Louis. Mounds 
and fortifications are found there, of the kind spoken of before. 
Here the elephants bones are not scattered about, but found laid 
in a long row near each other, as if they had been killed in a battle, 
or at the assault of some fortification. I gave him a descrip¬ 
tion of the opening of a Roman mound, at which I was present 
with my father, in the year 1813, and he expressed his astonish¬ 
ment at the great similarity between these mounds, and those of 
the Indian grave-hills. Among the stone war-hatchets in {he 
governor’s museum, there are several resembling the battle-axes 
which are found in Germany at these mounds. 
In our inn there lodged merchants, who prepare caravans, with 
which they go in a space of from between forty and fifty days, to 
Santa Fe in New Mexico. The articles which they mostly carry 
there, consist of cotton fabrics, cloths, iron ware, &c. These goods 
