Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (Volume XXVI) Part 14

The close of the day found me once more upon the banks of the Kaskaskia; and early on the succeeding morning, fording the stream, I pursued my route along the great national road towards Terre Haute.

This road is projected eighty feet in breadth, with a central carriage-path of thirty feet, elevated above all standing water, and in no instance to exceed three degrees from a perfect level. The work has been commenced along the whole {114} line, and is under various stages of advancement; for most of the way it is perfectly _direct_.

The bridges are to be of limestone, and of ma.s.sive structure, the base of the abutments being equal in depth to one third their alt.i.tude. The work was for a while suspended, for the purpose of investigating former operations, and subsequently through failure of an appropriation from Congress; but a grant has since been voted sufficient to complete the undertaking so far as it is now projected.[211] West of Vandalia the route is not yet located, though repeated surveys with reference to this object have been made. St.

Louis, Alton, Beardstown, and divers other places upon the Mississippi and its branches present claims to become the favoured point of its destination. Upon this road I journeyed some miles; and, even in its present unfinished condition, it gives evidence of its enormous character. Compare this grand national work with the crumbling relics of the mound-builders scattered over the land, and remark the contrast: yet how, think you, reader, would an hundred thousand men regard an undertaking like this?

My route at length, to my regret, struck off at right angles from the road, and for many a mile wound away among woods and creeks. As I rode along through the country I was somewhat surprised at meeting people from various quarters, who seemed to be gathering to some rendezvous, all armed with rifles, and with the paraphernalia of hunting suspended from their shoulders. At length, near noon, I pa.s.sed a log-cabin, around which {115} were a.s.sembled about a hundred men: and, upon inquiry, learned that they had come together for the purpose of "shooting a beeve,"[212] as the marksmen have it. The regulations I found to be chiefly these: A bull's-eye, with a centre nail, stands at a distance variously of from forty to seventy yards; and those five who, at the close of the contest, have most frequently _driven the nail_, are ent.i.tled to a fat ox divided into five portions. Many of the marksmen in the vicinity, I was informed, could drive the nail twice out of every three trials. Reluctantly I was forced to decline a civil invitation to join the party, and to leave before the sport commenced; but, jogging leisurely along through a beautiful region of prairie and woodland interspersed, I reached near nightfall the village of Salem.[213] This place, with its dark, weather-beaten edifices, forcibly recalled to my mind one of those gloomy little seaports sprinkled along the iron-bound coast of New-England, over some of which the ocean-storm has roared and the ocean-eagle shrieked for more than two centuries. The town is situated on the eastern border of the Grand Prairie, upon the stage-route from St. Louis to Vincennes; and, as approached from one quarter, is completely concealed by a bold promontory of timber springing into the plain. It is a quiet, innocent, gossiping little place as ever was, no doubt; never did any harm in all its life, and probably never will do any.

This sage conclusion is predicated upon certain items gathered at the village singing-school; at which, ever-notable place, the traveller, agreeable to invitation {116} attended, and carolled away most vehemently with about a dozen others of either s.e.x, under the cognizance of a certain worthy personage styled _the Major_, whose vocation seemed to be to wander over these parts for the purpose of "_building up_" the good people in psalmody. To say that I was not more surprised than delighted with the fruits of the honest songster's efforts in Salem, and that I was, moreover, marvellously edified by the brisk airs of the "Missouri Harmony," from whose cheerful pages operations were performed, surely need not be done; therefore, prithee reader, question me not.

_Mt. Vernon, Ill._

x.x.xII

"After we are exhausted by a long course of application to business, how delightful are the first moments of indolence and repose! _O che bella coza di far niente!_"--STEWART.

"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn!"

_Falstaff._

That distinguished metaphysician Dugald Stewart, in his treatise upon the "Active and Moral Powers," has, in the language of my motto, somewhere[214] observed, that leisure after continued exertion is a source of happiness perfect in its kind; and {117} surely, at the moment I am now writing, my own feelings abundantly testify to the force of the remark. For more than one month past have I been urging myself onward from village to village and from hamlet to hamlet, through woodland, and over prairie, river, and rivulet, with almost the celerity of an _avant courier_, and hardly with closer regard to pa.s.sing scenes and events. My purpose, reader, for I may as well tell you, has been to accomplish, within a portion of time to some degree limited, a "tour over the prairies" previously laid out. This, within the prescribed period, I am now quite certain of fulfilling; and here am I, at length "taking mine ease in mine inn" at the ancient and venerable French village Kaskaskia.

It is evening now. The long summer sunset is dying away in beauty from the heavens; and alone in my chamber am I gathering up the fragments of events scattered along the pathway of the week that is gone. Last evening at this hour I was entering the town of Pinkneyville, and my last number left me soberly regaling myself upon the harmonious _vocalities_ of the sombre little village of Salem. Here, then, may I well enough resume "the thread of my discourse."

During my wanderings in Illinois I have more than once referred to the frequency and violence of the thunder-gusts by which it is visited. I had travelled not many miles the morning after leaving Salem when I was a.s.sailed by one of the most terrific storms I remember to have yet encountered. All the morning the atmosphere had been most oppressive, {118} the sultriness completely prostrating, and the livid exhalations quivered along the parched-up soil of the prairies, as if over the mouth of an enormous furnace. A gauzy mist of silvery whiteness at length diffused itself over the landscape; an inky cloud came heaving up in the northern horizon, and soon the thunder-peal began to bellow and reverberate along the darkened prairie, and the great raindrops came tumbling to the ground. Fortunately, a shelter was at hand; but hardly had the traveller availed himself of its liberal hospitality, when the heavens were again lighted up by the sunbeams; the sable cloud rolled off to the east, and all was beautiful and calm, as if the angel of desolation in his hurried flight had but for a moment stooped the shade of his dusky wing, and had then swept onward to accomplish elsewhere his terrible bidding. With a reflection like this I was about remounting to pursue my way, when a prolonged, deafening, terrible crash--as if the wild idea of heathen mythology was indeed about to be realized, and the thunder-car of Olympian Jove was das.h.i.+ng through the concave above--caused me to falter with foot in stirrup, and almost involuntarily to turn my eye in the direction from which the bolt seemed to have burst. A few hundred yards from the spot on which I stood a huge elm had been blasted by the lightning; and its enormous shaft towering aloft, torn, mangled, shattered from the very summit to its base, was streaming its long ghastly fragments on the blast. The scene was one startlingly impressive; one of those few scenes in a man's life the remembrance {119} of which years cannot wholly efface; which he never _forgets_. As I gazed upon this giant forest-son, which the lapse of centuries had perhaps hardly sufficed to rear to perfection, now, even though a ruin, n.o.ble, that celebrated pa.s.sage of the poet Gray, when describing his _bard_, recurred with some force to my mind: in this description Gray is supposed to have had the painting of Raphael at Florence, representing Deity in the vision of Ezekiel, before him:

"Loose his beard and h.o.a.ry hair Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air," &c.

A ride of a few hours, after the storm had died away, brought me to the pleasant little town of Mt. Vernon.[215] This place is the seat of justice for Jefferson county, and has a courthouse of brick, decent enough to the eye, to be sure, but said to have been so miserably constructed that it is a perilous feat for his honour here to poise the scales. The town itself is an inconsiderable place, but pleasantly situated, in the edge of a prairie, if I forget not, and in every other respect is exactly what every traveller has seen a dozen times elsewhere in Illinois. Like Shelbyville, it is chiefly noted for a remarkable spring in its vicinity, said to be highly medicinal. How this latter item may stand I know not, but I am quite sure that all of the _pure element_ it was my own disagreeable necessity to partake of during my brief tarry savoured mightily of medicine or of something akin. Epsom salts and alum seemed the chief substances in solution; and with these minerals all the water in the region appeared heavily charged.

{120} It was a misty, miserable morning when I left Mt. Vernon; and as my route lay chiefly through a dense timbered tract, the dank, heavy atmosphere exhaling from the soil, from the luxuriant vegetation, and from the dense foliage of the over-hanging boughs, was anything but agreeable. To endure the pitiless drenching of a summer-shower with equanimity demands but a brief exercise of stoicism: but it is not in the nature of man amiably to withstand the equally pitiless _drenching_ of a drizzling, penetrating, everlasting fog, be it of sea origin or of land. At length a thunder-gust--the usual remedy for these desperate cases in Illinois--dissipated the vapour, and the glorious sunlight streamed far and wide athwart a broad prairie, in the edge of which I stood. The route was, in the language of my director, indeed a _blind_ one; but, having received special instructions thereupon, I hesitated not to press onward over the swelling, pathless plain towards the _east_. After a few miles, having crossed an arm of the prairie, directions were again sought and received, by which the route became due _south_, pathless as before, and through a tract of woodland rearing itself from a bog perfectly Serbonian. "Muddy Prairie" indeed. On every side rose the enormous shafts of the cypress, the water-oak, and the maple, flinging from their giant branches that gray, pensile, parasitical moss, which, weaving its long funereal fibres into a dusky mantle, almost entangles in the meshes the thin threads of sunlight struggling down from above.

It was here for the first time that I met in any considerable numbers {121} with that long-necked, long-legged, long-toed, long-tailed gentry called wild-turkeys: and, verily, here was a host ample to atone for all former deficiency, parading in ungainly magnificence through the forest upon every side, or peeping curiously down, with outstretched necks and querulous piping, from their lofty perches on the traveller below. It is by a skilful imitation of this same piping, to say nothing of the melodious gobble that always succeeds it, that the sportsman decoys these sentimental bipeds within his reach. The same method is sometimes employed in hunting the deer--an imitated bleating of the fawn when in distress--thus taking away the gentle mother's life through the medium of her most generous impulses; a most diabolical _modus operandi_, reader, permit me to say.

Emerging at length, by a circuitous path, once more upon the prairie, instructions were again sought for the _direct_ route to Pinkneyville, and a course nearly _north_ was now pointed out. Think of that; _east_, _south_, _north_, in regular succession too, over a tract of country perfectly uniform, in order to run a _right_ line between two given points! This was past all endurance. To a moral certainty with me, the place of my destination lay away just southwest from the spot on which I was then standing. Producing, therefore, my pocket-map and pocket-compa.s.s, by means of a little calculation I had soon laid down the prescribed course, determined to pursue none other, the remonstrances, and protestations, and objurgations of men, women, and children to the contrary notwithstanding. Pus.h.i.+ng {122} boldly forth into the prairie, I had not travelled many miles when I struck a path leading off in the direction I had chosen, and which _proved_ the direct route to Pinkneyville! Thus had I been forced to cross, recross, and cross again, a prairie miles in breadth, and to flounder through a swamp other miles in extent, to say nothing of the _depth_, and all because of the utter ignorance of the worthy souls who took upon them _to direct_. I have given this instance in detail for the special edification and benefit of all future wayfarers in Illinois.

The only unerring guide on the prairies is the map and the compa.s.s.

Half famished, and somewhat more than half vexed at the adventures of the morning, I found myself, near noon, at the cabin-door of an honest old Virginian, and was ere long placed in a fair way to relieve my craving appet.i.te. With the little compa.s.s which hung at the safety-riband of my watch, and which had done me such rare service during my wanderings, the worthy old gentleman seemed heart-stricken at first sight, and warmly protested that he and the "_stranger_" must have "_a small bit of a tug_" for that _fixen_, a proposition which said stranger by no means as warmly relished. Laying, therefore, before the old farmer a slight outline of my morning's ramble, he readily perceived that with me the "_pretty leetle fixen_" was anything but a superlative. My evening ride was a delightful one along the edge of an extended prairie; but, though repeatedly a.s.sured by the worthy settlers upon the route that I could "_catch no diffick_ulty on my way no how," my compa.s.s was {123} my only safe guide. At length, crossing "Mud River" upon a lofty bridge of logs, the town of Pinkneyville was before me just at sunset.[216]

Pinkneyville has but little to commend it to the pa.s.sing traveller, whether we regard beauty of location, regularity of structure, elegance, size, or proportion of edifices, or the cultivation of the farms in its vicinage. It would, perhaps, be a pleasant town enough were its site more elevated, its buildings larger, and disposed with a little more of mathematical exactness, or its streets less lanelike and less filthy. As it is, it will require some years to give it a standing among its fellows. It is laid out on the roll of a small prairie of moderate fertility, but has quite an extensive settlement of enterprising farmers, a circ.u.mstance which will conduce far more to the ultimate prosperity of the place. The most prominent structure is a blood-red jail of brick, standing near the centre of the village; rather a savage-looking concern, and, doubtless, so designed by its sagacious architect for the purpose of frightening evil doers.

Having taken these _observations_ from the tavern door during twilight, the traveller retired to his chamber, nothing loath, after a ride of nearly fifty miles, to bestow his tired frame to rest. But, alas! that verity compels him to declare it--

"'Tis true, and pity 'tis 'tis true,"

the "_Traveller's Inn_" was anything, nay, _every_thing but the comfort-giving spot the hospitable cognomen swinging from its signpost seemed to imply. Ah! the fond visions of quietude and repose, {124} of plentiful feeding and hearty sleeping, which those magic words, "_Traveller's Inn_," had conjured up in the weary traveller's fancy when they first delightfully swung before his eye.

"But human pleasure, what art thou, in sooth!

The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below!!"

Well--exhausted, worn down, tired out, the traveller yet found it as utterly impossible quietly to rest, as does, doubtless, "a half-a.s.soilzed soul in purgatory;" and, hours before the day had begun to break, he arose and ordered out his horse. Kind reader, hast ever, in the varyings of thy pilgrimage through this troublous world of ours, when faint, and languid, and weary with exertion, by any untoward circ.u.mstance, been forced to resist the gentle promptings of "quiet nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," and to count away the tedious hours of the livelong night till thy very existence became a burden to thee; till thy brain whirled and thy nerves tw.a.n.ged like the tense harp-string? And didst thou not, then--didst thou not, from the very depths of thy soul, a.s.sever this ill, of all ills mortality is heir to, that one most utterly and unutterably intolerable patiently to endure? 'Tis no very pitiful thing, sure, to consume the midnight taper, "sickly" though it be: we commiserate the sacrifice, but we fail not to appreciate the reward. Around the couch of suffering humanity, who could not out.w.a.tch the stars? the recompense is not of _this_ world.

"When youth and pleasure meet, To chase the glowing hours with flying feet,"

_who_ asks for "sleep till morn!" But when in weariness {125} of the flesh and in languidness of spirit, the overspent wayfarer has laid down his wearied frame to rest for the toils of the morrow, it is indeed a _bitter_ thing rudely to have that rest broken up! "The sleep of the _wayfaring_ man is sweet," and to have that slumber obtruded upon by causes too contemptible for a thought, is not in nature with equanimity to bear! Besides, the luckless sufferer meets with no _commiseration_: it is a matter all too ludicrous for pity; and as for fort.i.tude, and firmness, and the like, what warrior ever achieved a laurel in such a war? what glory is to be gained over a host of starving--but I forbear. You are pretty well aware, kind reader, or ought to be, that the situation of your traveller just then was anything but an enviable one. Not so, however, deemed the worthy landlord on this interesting occasion. His blank bewilderment of visage may be better imagined than described, as, aroused from sleep, his eye met the vision of his stranger guest; while the comic amalgamation of distress and pique in the marvellously elongated features of the fair hostess was so truly laughable, that a smile flitted along the traveller's rebellious muscles, serving completely to disturb the serenity of her breast! The good lady was evidently not a little nettled at the _apparent_ mirthfulness of her guest under his manifold miseries--I do a.s.sure thee, reader, the mirthfulness was only _apparent_--and did not neglect occasion thereupon to let slip a sly remark impugning his "gentle breeding," because, forsooth, dame Nature, in throwing together her "cunning workmans.h.i.+p," had gifted it with a {126} nervous system not quite of steel. Meanwhile, the honest publican, agreeable to orders, having brought forth the horse, with folded hands all meekly listened to the eloquence of his spouse; but the good man was meditating the while a retaliation in shape of a most unconscionable bill of cost, which was soon presented and was as soon discharged. Then, leaving the interesting pair to their own cogitations, with the very _top_ of the morning the traveller flung himself upon his horse and was soon out of sight.

_Kaskaskia, Ill._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] George D. Prentice (1802-70), founder of the Louisville _Journal_, was graduated from Brown University in 1823. Two years later he became editor of the Connecticut _Mirror_ and in 1828-30 had charge of the _New England Weekly Review_. In the spring of 1830, at the earnest solicitation of several influential Connecticut Whigs, he went West to gather data for a life of Henry Clay. Once in Kentucky he threw all the force of his political genius in support of Clay's policy. On November 24, 1830, he issued the first number of the Louisville _Journal_, which through his able management was soon recognized as the chief Whig organ in the West. Wholly devoted to Clay's cause, its own reputation rose and declined with that of its champion.

The _Journal_ maintained an existence till 1868, when Henry Watterson consolidated it with the Courier, under the t.i.tle of _Courier-Journal_. Prentice is reputed to have been the originator of the short, pointed paragraph in journalism. His _Life of Henry Clay_ (Hartford, 1831) is well known. In 1859 he published a collection of poems under the name _Prenticeana_ (New York). It was reprinted in 1870 with a biography of the author by G. W. Griffin (Philadelphia).--ED.

[2] John M. Peck, a Baptist minister, went as a missionary to St.

Louis in 1817. After nine years of preaching in Missouri and Illinois, he founded (1826) the Rocky Spring Seminary for training teachers and ministers. It is said that he travelled more than six thousand miles collecting money for endowing this school. In 1828 Peck began publis.h.i.+ng the _Western Pioneer_, the first official organ of the Baptist church in the West, and served as the corresponding secretary and financial agent of the American Baptist Publication Society from 1843 to 1845. He died at Rocky Springs, Illinois, in 1858. Peck made important contributions to the publications of the early historical societies in the Northwest. His chief independent works are: _A Guide for Emigrants_ (Boston, 1831), republished as _A New Guide for Emigrants_ (Boston, 1836); _Gazetteer of Illinois_ (Jacksonville, 1834 and 1837); _Father Clark or the Pioneer Preacher_ (New York, 1855); and "Life of Daniel Boone," in Jared Sparks, _American Biography_.

Judge James Hall was born in Philadelphia (1793), and died near Cincinnati in 1868. He was a member of the Was.h.i.+ngton Guards during the War of 1812-15, was promoted to the 2nd United States artillery, and accompanied Decatur on his expedition to Algiers (1815). Resigning in 1818, he practiced law at Shawneetown, Illinois (1820-27), and filled the office of public prosecutor and judge of the circuit court.

He moved to Vandalia (1827) and began editing the _Illinois Intelligencer_ and the _Illinois Monthly Magazine_. From 1836 to 1853 he was president of the commercial bank at Cincinnati, and acted as state treasurer. He published: _Letters from the West_ (London, 1828); _Legends of the West_ (1832); _Memoirs of the Public Services of General William Henry Harrison_ (Philadelphia, 1836); _Sketches of History, Life and Manners of the West_ (Philadelphia, 1835); _Statistics of the West at the Close of 1836_ (Cincinnati, 1836); _Notes on the Western States_ (Philadelphia, 1838); _History and Biography of the Indians of North America_ (3 volumes, 1838-44); _The West, its Soil, Surface, etc._ (Cincinnati, 1848); _The West, its Commerce and Navigation_ (Cincinnati, 1848); besides a few historical novels. For a contemporary estimate of the value of Hall's writings see _American Monthly Magazine_ (New York, 1835), v, pp. 9-15.

For Timothy Flint, see Pattie's _Narrative_, in our volume xviii, p.

25, note 1.

Major Alphonso Wetmore (1793-1849) was of much less importance as a writer on Western history than those above mentioned. He entered the 23rd infantry in 1812, and subsequently was transferred to the 6th. He served as paymaster for his regiment from 1815 to 1821, and was promoted to a captaincy (1819). In 1816 he moved with his family to Franklinton, Missouri, and later practiced law in St. Louis. His chief contribution to Western travel is a _Gazetteer of Missouri_ (St.

Louis, 1837).--ED.

[3] The reference is to Shakespeare's _King John_, III, iv.--ED.

[4] For a brief sketch of the history of Louisville, see Croghan's _Journals_, in our volume i, p.136, note 106.--ED.

[5] The seven stations formed on Beargra.s.s Creek in the fall of 1779 and spring of 1780 were: Falls of the Ohio, Linnis, Sullivan's Old, Hoagland's, Floyd's, Spring, and Middle stations. Beargra.s.s Creek, a small stream less than ten miles in length, flows in a northwestern trend and uniting with two smaller creeks, South and Muddy forks, enters the Ohio (not the Mississippi) immediately above the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville).--ED.

[6] It is only at high stages of the river that boats even of a smaller cla.s.s can pa.s.s over the Falls. At other times they go through the "Louisville and Portland Ca.n.a.l." In 1804 the Legislature of Kentucky incorporated a company to cut a ca.n.a.l around the falls.

Nothing effectual, however, beyond surveys, was done until 1825, when on the 12th of January of that year the Louisville and Portland Ca.n.a.l Company was incorporated by an act of the legislature, with a capital of $600,000, in shares of $100 each, with perpetual succession. 3665 of the shares of the company are in the hands of individuals, about seventy in number, residing in the following states: New-Hamps.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, New-York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri, and 2335 shares belong to the government of the United States.

In December, 1825, contracts were entered into to complete the work of this ca.n.a.l within two years, for about $375,000, and under these contracts the work was commenced in March, 1826. Many unforeseen difficulties r.e.t.a.r.ded the work until the close of the year 1828. At this time the contractors failed; new contracts were made at advanced prices, and the ca.n.a.l was finally opened for navigation December 5th, 1830. When completed it cost about $750,000. Owing to the advanced season at which it was opened, the deposites of alluvial earth at the lower extremity of the ca.n.a.l, or debouchure, could not be removed; and also from the action of the floods during the succeeding severe winter on the stones that had been temporarily deposited on the sides of the ca.n.a.l, causing them to be precipitated into the ca.n.a.l, it was not used to the extent that it otherwise would have been. During the year 1831, 406 steamboats, 46 keelboats, and 357 flatboats, measuring 76,323 tons, pa.s.sed through the locks, which are about one fourth the number that would have pa.s.sed if all the obstructions had been removed.

The Louisville and Portland Ca.n.a.l is about two miles in length; is intended for steamboats of the largest cla.s.s, and to overcome a fall of 24 feet, occasioned by an irregular ledge of limerock, through which the entire bed of the ca.n.a.l is excavated, a part of it, to the depth of 12 feet, is overlaid with earth. There is one guard and three lift locks combined, all of which have their foundation on the rock.

One bridge of stone 240 feet long, with an elevation of 68 feet to top of the parapet wall, and three arches, the centre one of which is semi-elliptical, with a transverse diameter of 66, and a semi-conjugate diameter of 22 feet. The two side arches are segments of 40 feet span. The guard lock is 190 feet long in the clear, with semicircular heads of 26 feet in diameter, 50 feet wide, and 42 feet high, and contains 21,775 perches of mason-work. The solid contents of this lock are equal to 15 common locks, such as are built on the Ohio and New-York ca.n.a.ls. The lift locks are of the same width with the guard lock, 20 feet high, and 183 feet long in the clear, and contain 12,300 perches of mason-work. The entire length of the walls, from the head of the guard lock to the end of the outlet lock, is 921 feet. In addition to the amount of mason-work above, there are three culverts to drain off the water from the adjacent lands, the mason-work of which, when added to the locks and bridge, give the whole amount of mason-work 41,989 perches, equal to about 30 common ca.n.a.l locks. The cross section of the ca.n.a.l is 200 feet at top of banks, 50 feet at bottom, and 42 feet high, having a capacity equal to that of 25 common ca.n.a.ls; and if we keep in view the unequal quant.i.ty of mason-work compared to the length of the ca.n.a.l, the great difficulties of excavating earth and rock from so great a depth and width, together with the contingencies attending its construction from the fluctuations of the Ohio River, it may not be considered as extravagant in drawing the comparison between the work in this and in that of 70 or 75 miles of common ca.n.a.lling.

In the upper sections of the ca.n.a.l, the alluvial earth to the average depth of twenty feet being removed, trunks of trees were found more or less decayed, and so imbedded as to indicate a powerful current towards the present sh.o.r.e, some of which were cedar, which is not now found in this region. Several _fireplaces_ of a rude construction, with partially burnt wood, were discovered near the rock, as well as the bones of a variety of small animals and several human skeletons; rude implements formed of bone and stone were frequently seen, as also several well-wrought specimens of hemat.i.te of iron, in the shape of plummets or sinkers, displaying a knowledge in the arts far in advance of the present race of Indians.

The first stratum of rock was a light, friable slate, in close contact with the limestone, and difficult to disengage from it; this slate did not, however, extend over the whole surface of the rock, and was of various thicknesses, from three inches to four feet.

The stratum next to the slate was a close, compact limestone, in which petrified seash.e.l.ls and an infinite variety of coralline formations were imbedded, and frequent cavities of crystalline incrustations were seen, many of which still contained petroleum of a highly fetid smell, which gives the name to this description of limestone. This description of rock is on an average of five feet, covering a substratum of a species of cias limestone of a bluish colour, imbedding nodules of hornstone and organic remains. The fracture of this stone has in all instances been found to be irregularly conchoidal, and on exposure to the atmosphere and subjection to fire, it crumbles to pieces. When burnt and ground, and mixed with a due proportion of silicious sand, it has been found to make a most superior kind of hydraulic cement or water-lime.

The discovery of this valuable limestone has enabled the ca.n.a.l company to construct their masonry more solidly than any other known in the United States.