Fig. 43.—Petroglyph near Alton, Illinois.
Some 3 or 4 miles above Alton, high up beneath the overhanging cliff, which forms a sort of cave shelter on the smooth face of a thick ledge of rock, is a series of paintings, twelve in number. They are painted or rather stained in the rock with a reddish brown pigment that seems to defy the tooth of time. It may be said, however, that their position is so sheltered that they remain almost perfectly dry. We made sketches of them some thirty years ago and on a recent visit could see that they had changed but little, although their appearance denotes great age.
These pictographs are situated on the cliff more than a hundred feet above the river. A protruding ledge, which is easily reached from a hollow in the bluff, leads to the cavernous place in the rock.
Mr. James D. Middleton, formerly of the Bureau of Ethnology, mentions the occurrence of petroglyphs on the bluffs of the Mississippi river, in Jackson county, about 12 miles below Rockwood. Also of others about 4 or 5 miles from Prairie du Rocher, near the Mississippi river.
IOWA.
Mr. P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, found numerous caves on the banks of the Mississippi river, in northeastern Iowa, 4 miles south of New Albion, containing incised petroglyphs. Fifteen miles south of this locality paintings occur on the cliffs. He also discovered painted characters upon the cliffs on the Mississippi river, 19 miles below New Albion.
KANSAS.
Mr. Edward Miller reports in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. X, 1869, p. 383, the discovery of a petroglyph near the line of the Union Pacific railroad, 15 miles southeast of Fort Harker, formerly known as Fort Ellsworth, Kansas. The petroglyph is upon a formation belonging to No. 1, Lower Cretaceous group, according to the classification of Meek and Hayden.
The parts of the two plates VII and VIII of the work cited, which bear the inscriptions, are now presented as Fig. 44, being from two views of the same rock.