[238] Vide acts passed at the second session of the 16th Congress of the United States, page 88.
[239] Vide acts passed at the second session of the 16th Congress, p. 91.
[240] Silliman.
[241] This fact is not stated in full confidence. I cannot refer to any authorities to prove that they were formally recognized by the United States before this very recent period. By the French and British governments they were known soon after the first settlements at Quebec and Albany (A. D. 1608, 1614), and subsequently treated with. A band of warriors from Chegoimegon, on Lake Superior, under the command of Waub Ojeag, or the White Fisher, was present at the taking of Fort Niagara by Sir W. Johnston in 1759.
[242] At the time these sketches were written, no geological observations had been made on this field, which has, at subsequent periods, been so elaborately described; nor had the topic itself attracted much attention. I landed at New York, in the ship Arethusa, from New Orleans, in the summer of 1819, and published, in that city, in the fall of that year, an account of the lead-bearing rocks of Missouri, and their supporting white sandstones, which rest, in horizontal deposits, on the primitive formation of the St. Francis; bringing, at the same time, a rich collection of the mineralogy of that region, which soon became known in private cabinets. This became the cause of my employment, by the United States Government, to visit the alleged copper mines on Lake Superior, as a member of the expedition to the sources of the Mississippi. I left Oneida County, in the district remarked on, on the 10th of April of that year, and reached the banks of the Niagara River on the 29th of that month. On returning from the sources of the Mississippi, I entered the same region on the 17th of October, and reached Oneida on the 21st of the same month. Prior to my visit to the Great West, I had dwelt some three years—namely, 1809, '10, '11, '12—in Oneida and Ontario counties. These were the opportunities enjoyed, up to the period, for acquiring a knowledge of the geography and geology of the country. Mr. A. Eaton's Index to Geology, published early in 1820, embraces nothing extending to western New York.
[243] Appropriately pronounced a "secondary graywacke slate," by Mr. Eaton.
[244] Usually written Skenanodoah, but pronounced as above.
[245] This formation cannot be called "red sandstone," from its being generally white or gray, but appears to occupy the position of the "horizontal red sandstone" among European rocks.
[246] The cornutiferous lime-rock of Mr. Eaton.
[247] These tracts bear a valuable growth of pines, which constitute the source of a profitable lumber trade with the Ohio Valley.