‘The three articles above enumerated are first in quantity and importance; but there are several others, which deserve notice as subjects of philosophical curiosity. The sulphate of lime, or plaster of Paris, is to be seen variously formed; ponderous, crystallized, and impalpable, or soft, light, and rather spongy. Vestiges of the sulphate of iron, are also to be seen in one or two places. Small specimens of the carbonate, and also the nitrate of magnesia, have been found. The rocks in the cave principally consist of carbonate of lime, or common limestone. ‘I had almost forgotten to state, that near the forks of the cave are two specimens of painting, probably of Indian origin. The one appears to be a savage, with something like a bow in his hand, and furnishes the hint that it was done when that instrument of death was in use. The other is so much defaced, that it is impossible to say what it was intended to represent.’ _Carver’s Cave._――‘About twelve miles below the new garrison at St. Peter’s,’ says Mr. Schoolcraft, ‘we stopped to examine a remarkable cavern, on the east banks of the Mississippi, called _Wakon-teebe_, by the Narcotah or Sioux Indians, but which, in compliment to the memory of its first European visitor, should be denominated Carver’s Cave. It is situated in a rock of the most beautiful white sand-stone, at the head of a small valley about four hundred yards from the banks of the river. Its mouth is about sixty or seventy feet wide and twenty in height, but the former soon decreases to about twenty feet, and the latter to seven. This width gradually lessens as you advance during the first hundred yards, but the height remains nearly the same, so that a man can walk without stooping. Then it tapers into a narrow passage, where it is necessary to creep, which suddenly opens into a spacious chamber. From this a narrow crevice continues as far as it has been explored. Some of our party pursued it four hundred yards by the light of wax candles. It is very damp and chilly. There is a handsome stream of pure water running from its mouth. The temperature of the air in the cave was fifty-four degrees, that of the water forty-seven. As it is situated in sand-stone rock, it affords no stalactites, or spars. Some parts of the rock at the mouth are colored green, probably by the carbonate of copper. The bed of the brook is composed of a crystalline sand of the most snowy whiteness, originating from the disintegration of the surrounding walls. Scattered over this are a number of small pebbles, of so intensely black a color, as to create a pleasing contrast, when viewed through the medium of a clear stream. These, on examination, proved to be masses of limestone, granite, and quartz, colored externally by a thin deposit of earthy matter, and I conclude the color to proceed from the gallic acid, with which the water, percolating into the cavern, through the beds of oak leaves of the superincumbent forest, may be partially saturated.