CHAPTER X. 
Geology. 
I.—Geological report of the country explored under the 38th and 41st parallels of north latitude, in 1853-’54, by James Schiel, 
M. D., Geologist for the expeditions. 
II.—Letter from Professor J. W. Bailey, upon infusorial fossils submitted to him by Dr. Schiel. 
Sir : In the report which I have the honor herewith to transmit to you, I have endeavored to 
give a description of the geology of the country through which we travelled after leaving 
Westport. It may, perhaps, more properly he termed a geology of the road over which we 
travelled, since the geological exploration had to he confined to those parts of the country which 
lay in the immediate neighborhood of that road. I have not entered in this report into a too 
minute, and therefore tiresome description of details; nor have I attempted to found unwar¬ 
rantable generalizations on restricted and, from their very nature, insufficient observations; 
hut I have tried to represent, in as small a . picture as possible, the chief geological features of 
the explored country. Many things that would have to he mentioned in an independent geolo¬ 
gical paper—as the shape and elevation of mountains and mountain chains, the configuration 
of the different parts of the explored country, &c.—have been omitted as a useless repetition 
of what has been given in your general report of explorations. 
In describing the sedimentary rocks of the plains, it must, of course, he left undecided 
whether, in the succession of the strata as they have been enumerated, there are still some 
other strata lying between, for sometimes we travel a great distance, and the level changes 
many hundred feet before we meet again with an accidental outcropping of rock. 
Between Westport and the Little Arkansas there is a series of limestone Strata composed of 
rocks which differ in appearance and physical properties, fracture, color, hardness, &c., hut 
which must, nevertheless, he considered as members of one and the same formation. Of the 
limestone around Westport, which extends into the Shawnee territory, (now Kansas), there is a 
denudation on a creek near our first camp. It is in some places densely filled with petrifactions, 
Terebratula subtilita, Spirifer, (striatus ?) Productus splendens, and two species of Productus not 
to be determined from my specimens, apparently a new species of Phillipsia, so as to appear 
almost as a conglomerate of these shells. 
On Indian creek we find a limestone of a yellow red color, not very hard, and interspersed 
with white crystal leaves belonging to the organic remains of the rock, which have become ob¬ 
literated by crystallization. It would he impossible to recognise to what kind of organism they 
belonged, hut for the agency of the creek, which, in running over the rock, dissolves the softer 
part of it, leaving the crystallized parts behind, so that the whole surface of this limestone 
along the creek is thickly overspread with fossils. They are mostly parts of broken stems of 
a species of encrinites, fragments of some bryozoa and of some other undistinguishable shells. 
The next limestone, found near Willow creek, is gray, hard, of subcrystalline fracture, and 
includes fossils, Fenestella, Productus semireticulatus , and Productus cequicostatus. 
More westward, up to the Little Arkansas, we meet, from distance to distance, with out¬ 
croppings of limestone strata, but the rock becomes more compact, sometimes excessively hard, 
and petrifactions are extremely rare, if they are not wanting entirely. I found in one case only 
a fragment of a small trilobite in a limestone west of Willow creek. The dip of all these strata, 
which must be considered as members of the coal formation, is a few degrees northeast. 
