A BILLET-DOUX.
———
BY FRANCES S. OSGOOD.
———
Is your soul at home to-day,
Eulalie?
And if it be,
May mine come in and stay,
Eulalie?
Or has yours gone out to play,
Eulalie!
And if it be,
Will it be long away,
Eulalie?
I know it is the willfulest of things,
Eulalie!
But if it be
Too gay to shut an hour its frolic wings,
Eulalie,
When it alights, so tenderly it sings,
Eulalie,
That as for me,
More joy than some that longer stay it brings,
Eulalie!
And I would not have it fettered for the world,
Eulalie!
For if it be—
Ah! that lip, with laughing scorn I see it curled,
Eulalie!
Its wings would lose their light if they were furled,
Eulalie!
Then not for me,
No fetter be on them for all the world,
Eulalie!
If my soul, on calling, “not at home,” is told,
Eulalie,
I would make free
To wait till yours came back, tired and cold,
Eulalie!
And then it will be glad its wings to fold,
Eulalie,
And I should see
How long I might the glorious truant hold,
Eulalie!
They say that more domestic and more tame,
Eulalie,
It ought to be!
But if Heaven gave it wings, were you to blame,
Eulalie?
Ah, no! to tie a Peri were a shame,
Eulalie!
And they might see
It always carried joy where’er it came,
Eulalie!
WESTERN RECOLLECTIONS.
THE ILLINOIS RIVER AND THE OZARK MOUNTAINS.
———
BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.
———
Every one knows of the Illinois River emptying into the Mississippi at Alton, and of the fertile champagne country it waters. All are familiar with the traditions of the hardships undergone in its discovery by the good fathers Hennepin and Marquette; of the stirring wars of the Illinois, Potawatamie and Peoria Indians, and of the recollections of that cordon of military posts by which France united Detroit with the great point d’appui of Fort Chartres, built near where Trinity now stands, but of which scarcely a trace remains, except a portion of the curtain and bastions. These are the associations which rise in the mind of most persons at the word Illinois, which to me, however, is suggestive of another train of ideas. In a south-western direction from the point of confluence of the Gasconade and Missouri Rivers, extends a broad chain of mountains, of which little except the name Ozark is known. Many streams which elsewhere would be esteemed large rivers roll from its valleys northward into the Osage, and in a southern direction into the Arkansas. After crossing two-thirds of the state of Missouri, this ridge passes through the north-west county of the State of Arkansas, and thence reaches across the country of the Cherokees and Chactas far into Texas. Through the passes of this range many important rivers flow, among which are the Arkansas, Red and Canadienne. There is a striking peculiarity in this mountain range—that all the waters flowing from it, either northward or southward, are clear as crystal, while all the other streams of the country are foul and turbid. On one of these streams, the Neosho, stands the lonely post of Fort Gibson, and twenty miles below is another river called the Illinois. This is not a large stream, measuring certainly not more than a hundred miles, but is one of the most picturesque imaginable. Flowing between two ridges of the Ozark, it winds like a serpent around the bases of the mountains, which now tower in immensity, clad to their very summits with huge pines, or again gradually decrease in size until they spread into rich and luxuriant prairies. The road from Fort Gibson to Fayetteville, in Arkansas, is along this stream, which it crosses more than a dozen times, and thus enables the traveler to behold all the wonderful beauties of the scenery. Words cannot describe it adequately. I have often in fording the river, which may at many places be done without wetting the saddle-girths, looked up the bed. Smooth and transparent as glass, rolling over pebbles of silex and crystal, it looks like a band of silver beneath the arched boughs of the aspen and gigantic walnut trees, while the immediate banks were fringed by the long-leaved willow and cane. Not unfrequently a single glance would reveal to me, when lost in admiration at the quiet beauty of such a scene, another of a far different yet equally pleasing style. The current would quicken—small islets would appear, scarcely more than a rood in breadth, against which the waters would leap and lash themselves into fury. The current would quicken yet more, and in the distance a rugged mountain would be seen. Against the base of this the waters would rush and whirl into eddies over the seething surface of which wild-fowl almost constantly floated. The low grounds on the river abounded with the sloe or scuppanon, and at distances of every mile or two, natural vineyards, bearing a large, rich, luscious grape, without a particle of the musky flavor which characterises almost all the American uvæ, were seen. So immense were these vines that they ran from tree to tree, masking every thing with their foliage, and displaying their grand clusters over the barren limbs of the stunted oak or hickory. I have called the Illinois a beautiful river, and have spoken of the lucidness of its water—I can give an illustration of the latter which is most apropos. Several years since I was stationed on the bank of this stream with a small detachment of men, and without any other officer. In the long August days, when the prairies were burned, and scarcely a breath of air was to be had in the forests, I used to while away many weary hours upon the banks of the river either fishing or bathing. One day I amused myself with an Indian lance in killing the fine buffalo-fish, which I could see distinctly in the translucent waters. I had posed myself on the bow of the boat in pursuit of one peculiarly large fish which shot up the stream with the rapidity of an arrow. The soldier who sat at the stern of the boat, a very active and nervous man, (he was killed, poor fellow, at the storming of Taos, in New Mexico,) drove the boat after the quarry with scarcely less rapidity. At last I had overtaken him, the boat hung above him, like a gigantic leaf in the atmosphere, which could scarcely be distinguished from the water below. Poising myself, I drove the lance into the fish, and a second afterward, to my amazement, was floundering ten feet below the surface of the water, and probably yet twenty from the pebbly bottom. I would have sworn the water was not more than four feet deep, and scrambled out I know not how, for I could never swim—not, however, until I had upset the boat and made poor Orndorf a sharer in my calamity. The clearness of the water, surpassing any thing I have ever seen, is only approached by the one spring near Fort Fanning, in Florida, upon which so much inquiry has been expended. I would myself pronounce it the famous fountain of health for which De Leon sought so long, were it not that every human being who drinks of its transparent waters, unless craftily qualified, dies with that most loathsome of all diseases, the ague and fever.
The first white man who ever trod in the valleys of the Ozark was the famous Fernando de Soto. About the year 1539 or 1540, this gallant soldier, capitan-general of Florida, and a marquis, made a voyage to his commandery, for the purpose of conquering it. Sailing from Havana he landed at the bay of the Holy Spirit, now called Tampa, Hillsborough, Honda, etc., and occupied an Indian village not far from the mouth of the Manittee River, and just opposite the present post of Fort Brooke. The old ruins are still visible there, and the trace of an aqueduct or canal which appears at some distant day to have connected the waters of the great interior lakes with the gulf. People say the ruins are the remnant of an old Spanish fort; but half a glance will satisfy any one that all the Spanish troops ever in North America could not have constructed that aqueduct, which to all appearance is old as the city of Seville. The ruins belonged evidently to some older race, and are very curious though they have nothing to do with De Soto.
De Soto marched through Florida across the country of Apalache Indians, with whom he had a fight, across the Mississippi toward Mexico. De Soto, first of Europeans, saw the Mississippi, and crossed it somewhere near Memphis, if the account given by old Biedma, his historian, of topography be true. Thence he now passed through the now State of Arkansas, crossing the Ozark Ridge, passing over the Red River, and marching along the false Wachita until he came to the famous Rio Grande, since famous for the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and celebrated by the Mexican poet,[[1]] Ho Axe de Saltillo. De Soto did not reach New Spain, but was forced to retrace his steps, died, and was thrown by his soldiers into the Mississippi, to prevent the natives from mutilating his remains. It was a fitting tomb for so great a man. Any one who wishes to read all the items of this great march may find them in old Biedma’s strange book, in the vidas de los Conquistadores, or as those books are somewhat rare, in the Compendium of Discoveries until 1573, by Conway Robinson, Esq., of Richmond, Va., a person who devotes himself for amusement and relaxation to digging out the gems of strange old books most persons would think it hard work to read.
De Soto first looked on these Ozark Mountains and a weary time his men-at-arms, in coats of mail and chain armor, must have had to climb them. They were then, as they were until very recently, uninhabited, and the home of all kinds of wild beasts known on the continent. The black bear, the cougar, catamount, deer and elk, were found among its ravines and the glades at their foot, and even now old beaver-dams attest the existence of those bestial republicans on almost all the minor streams which run into the Illinois. The land is barren, except upon the immediate bank of the river, and the mountains seem masses of pebbles similar in character to those over which the river runs. Strangely enough gigantic pines grow upon the mountains, the dark foliage of which, seen even in the sunlight, looks, compared with that of other trees, like the shadows cast by what Schiller calls
Fliegende Wolken, Segler des Luft,
over the earth during a windy day of March. The table-land, however, at the top of what I may call the secondary hills, is covered with what are called black-jacks, the ugliest and most ungainly of all things on the surface of the earth, not excepting the Mexican cactus, which is like no other thing animal or vegetable, except the porcupine. The hills seem vast masses of limestone, with the granite occasionally showing itself. I have no doubt of the richness of the soil in mineral wealth, copper being everywhere apparent, and the Ozark Mountains evidently connecting themselves with the Sierra Madre and Cordillera of Mexico. Some day the gold-hunter will deform this beautiful land, the vast groves and of timber which crown its mountains will fall. Worse than all, the picturesque Illinois will be deformed and forced to pass through some series of plank troughs in the gold-washing establishment of Messrs. Jones, Smith & Co.
In 1837 these mountains were uninhabited. One road wound among the intricacies of the mountains between Fort Gibson and the village of Fayetteville. After leaving the Methodist Mission of Prospect Hill smoke was scarcely seen by the traveler until he had entered the limits of Arkansas. There were a few hunting and bridle-paths, leading in a direction parallel to the road, which were frequented exclusively by the smugglers engaged in the nefarious business of selling whiskey to the Indians. Since then a mighty change has taken place. On the removal of the Cherokee Indians west, the North Carolina band selected these hills as most like their old homes and established themselves among them. Hamlets grew up in the valleys and farms were opened; so that in a short time the intelligent Cherokee citizens, second to no agricultural class in the world, followed in their train, and large plantations were opened. One of these colonists, the well-known chief, Bushyhead, has a magnificent estate comprising a prairie and grove of about one thousand acres, which has none to surpass it in the country. A wooded knoll rises at the back of his house, to the heighth of about 250 feet, and on a calm summer-day the ripple of the Illinois may be heard in the distance through the forests and green corn-fields. The writer has often partaken of his hospitality, and has been a witness of the prosperity and happiness of his whole household, Indian and Negro, (he has many slaves.) This happiness would be without alloy but that the Indian always knows he is but a tenant at will of the soil he stands upon, and looks back, perhaps with regret, to the days when his forefathers wandered in savage independence on the shores of the Atlantic. On the other side of the Neosho River the mountains are higher and wilder, and even now desolate; and in the year 1840 I crossed that portion of the ridge on duty, and have a strange tale to tell of it.
After a furlough of some years, I returned in 1840 to the west, and after reporting for duty to the headquarters of the department, was ordered to join a squadron of my regiment then stationed on the Red River. The navigation of the western rivers was then most uncertain, and I was ordered to cross the intermediate country by land instead of trusting to the tortuous navigation of the Arkansas, emphatically one of those streams of which John Randolph said, “they were dry in summer and choked up with ice during the winter.”
The old officers of the post told me I might easily have my orders changed by applying to the general, and advised me to do so, as my route lay through a peculiarly wild and desolate country. They told me what they had heard of the Ozark Mountains, of the precipices and torrents, the almost impassable resacas, etc. I was, however, an old coureur des bois, and all this but stimulated me to attempt the passage. Fort Gibson lay at the head of navigation at that time, though steamboats have since passed far above the Cape Farewell of 1840. Similarly situated was Fort Towson, on the Red River; between the two lay the country of the Cherokees, Chactas, and Chichasas, and many formidable rivers, such as the Canadienne, the Verdigris, and the whole of the southern tributaries of the Arkansas. To cross this country with all its difficulties on the first Wednesday in April, 1810, I left Fort Gibson, with no equipage, or what Cæsar calls impedimenta, other than one pack mule, loaded with provisions, and a servant, like myself, mounted, who rejoiced in the name of Barny. I often wonder what has become of him, and whether, like Latour d’Auvergne, first grenadier of France, he may not have “died on the field of glory,” during the Mexican war.
As my orders contained no recommendation to make the journey with peculiar rapidity, and as I was aware that nothing awaited me at Fort Towson but the monotonous existence of a subaltern, I loitered along the road systematically, as a veteran colonel en route to reinforce a militia general, and on Sunday lay by on the banks of a picturesque stream, whiling away time with my rod and angle, which Isack Walton recommends as “fosterers of meditation, and gratitude to God for having made so many fine fish for man’s especial benefit,” and which I was too old a soldier to be without in the North American wilderness. Monday broke upon me cold and chill, and wearied even by my voluntary halt, I set out to continue my journey. There had been during the night a mist and sleet, so that the prairie, which on the day before had looked like a garden covered with periwinkles, the beautiful wild indigo, and the sensitive-plant, was now become a glacier. I rode on, therefore, wrapped in the cape of my dragoon cloak, and scarcely noticing what passed around me. Few persons except half-breeds had ever crossed the prairie in this direction before, and having to depend merely on general direction for my course, it is not surprising that I became lost. Any one ever lost in the north-western prairie is aware that when once astray, every attempt at correction makes matters worse, and what with the uniformity of the whole face of the country, at nightfall I was utterly bewildered. I was forced to encamp on the bald prairie, sacrificing to my comfort the solitary tree which I afterward learned was a land-mark. It made a very bad fire, being filled with sap, but sufficed to broil a rasher of bacon which, with a cup of coffee transformed into what the Spaniards call a gloria by a glass of “old corn,” constituted my supper. The sleet had by this time disappeared, and the cattle hobbled and allowed to wander at will, fared better than I, on the young prairie grass, which they relished not a little after their dry provender at Fort Gibson. Tuesday came fair and bright, and far in the distance I saw one of the Ozark’s peaks rising tall and solitary in just the direction I had not been marching on the day before. To it I directed my course.
The country soon became broken, and on each side of me rose rough hills. I knew at once I would be forced to cross the ridge, and set manfully to the task. As I progressed the scenery became every mile more grand, and I began to be thankful for the accident which had led me into the bewildering maze.
I have stood on tall mountains, having threaded the Alleghany, and looked on the boldest peaks of wilder lands. Above rose a tall peak with half precipitous sides, its base skirted with a dense growth of the Osage orange. This strange and peculiar tree merits a more minute description. It belongs, I believe, to the same genus with the box-tree of our forest, for from its limbs and leaves, when broken, exudes a milky gelatinous humor, not unlike that of the fig and India-rubber plant. Its leaves are smooth and glazed and so precisely like those of the Florida orange that the two cannot easily be distinguished. It bears a large fruit in character similar to the balls of the sycamore, but which becomes during the process of decay a noisome pulp, and is said to be a deadly poison. The size of the fruit is about that of the cocoa-nut, divested of its husk, and the heighth of the tree about thirty-five feet, with thick, gnarled limbs, covered with long, straight spines, like those of the honey acacia. By the Canadian colonists of Arkansas and the French of Louisiana it was called the bois d’arc, from the fact that of this the Natches and Opelousas made their bows. This beautiful growth is now rapidly disappearing, it having been discovered that it furnishes a dye of a brilliant yellow, long a desideratum in the arts. During the last few years many cargoes have been sent to France, and the cutting it has, like the procuring of log-wood, become a distinct and important branch of industry. Many stories are told of this tree which would make us believe it exerts an influence scarcely less baleful than that of the fabulous Upas tree of Borneo, popular superstition attributing to it the deadly disease of man and brute known as the “milk sickness.”
The base of the peak before me was skirted with thickets of this beautiful tree, intermingled with the dog-wood, then in the glory of its flower, and three or four varieties of the acacia and Canadian redbud. Here and there on the very hill-side were expanses grown up with the tall green-cane and the beautiful Mexican oats. Through such a growth I commenced my ascent, and soon passed by the sinuosities of an Indian trail into an expanse of cupriferous volcanic rock, almost without any other growth than the red-root, or Indian tea. Passing through this, I came into a belt of tall pines, reaching far above the crest of the peak. No engineer could have constructed a glacis with a more regular inclination than this portion of the mountain displayed. At last I stood upon the crest, and a prospect opened before me I have never seen surpassed or equaled. I was on the very backbone of the ridge, and before me lay a succession of peaks, gradually descending into the bosom of a vale perhaps ten miles wide, while beyond this happy valley rose another ridge, parallel, descending gradually as the one on which I stood had become elevated. A clear, cold stream ran at the foot of the peak on which I was, and amid the stillness of a calm spring day I distinctly heard the murmur of its ripples. Down the bleak hill-sides of the other ridge I could trace more than one silver line which marked the descent of tributary rills. I could have remained long on that bald mountain-peak, but was warned by the descent of the sun to proceed downward. Taking the horses by the bridle, for I committed the care of the pack-mule to poor Barny, I began carefully to follow the pathway, and was ultimately enabled to reach the base in spite of sundry falls of the heavy pack, which, in spite of discipline, wrung hearty curses from poor Barny’s over-burdened heart. I encamped at the foot of the peak, on a branch of the Boggy, or Bogue, itself a tributary of the Red.
After many days of painful travel, precisely similar to the one I have described, except that the western ridge was more difficult than the eastern, I reached the prairie through which the Red River runs. On the summit of several of the peaks I had found large springs and pools of water, and in the valleys the streams expanded into beautiful lakes. In some of these valleys were grand groves of the wild-plum, and a variety of other growths, among which was the iron-wood and box-elder. The cotton-wood, so common northward, has disappeared. At last I arrived at Fort Towson. I had missed the direction, and to reach a point about one hundred miles from Gibson, had traveled three. Twenty miles after leaving the latter post, I had seen the smoke of not one hearth till I reached the yellow water, about ten miles from Fort Towson, yet during all this time I had been in a small labyrinth of mountains, surrounded on all sides by the dense population of the Cherokee and Chickasa nation, the Opeloulas of Louisiana and Western Texas.
I afterward was informed that the Indian path I had more than once passed was a portion of the great Delaware trail which crosses the whole American continent, from Erie, in Pennsylvania, to California, and which marks the migration of those American Gitanos from the homes where the white man found them to the chief seat of the tribe on the Missouri River, to the outposts on the Red River and on the Pacific. Along it they still go, and not unfrequently two of their well-armed and gallant braves will fight their way through hordes of hostile and degenerate Indians of the prairie. It will be found always to cross the streams at the most fordable point, and he who strays from it to avoid travel, will generally find that the longest way round is the nearest way home. After my arrival at Fort Gibson I did not regret my mistake, which had made me acquainted with so beautiful a country; and I hope my reader is weary neither of the Illinois River or the Ozark Mountains.
| [1] | C. F. Hoffman, of New York. |