Loutre Island is something more than nine miles long, and about one mile wide, and is the residence of several families. Between it and the main land is an isthmus, which is left naked at times of low water. Loutre Creek enters at the lower end of the island. It is not navigable. Mr. Talbot, formerly from Kentucky, has been resident here for nine years. His farm is in a high state of cultivation, and furnishes abundant supplies of poultry, eggs, potatoes, and the numerous products of the kitchen garden, of which he sent a handsome present on board our boat. He informed us that peach-trees succeed well in the most fertile parts of the island.[102]
The first dwellings constructed by the white settlers are nearly similar in every part of the United States. Superior wealth and industry are indicated by the number and magnitude of corn-cribs, smoke-houses, and similar appurtenances; but on the Missouri, we rarely meet with any thing occupying the place of the barn in the northern states. The dwellings of people who have emigrated from Virginia, or any of the more southern states, have usually the form of double cabins, or two distinct houses, each containing a single room, and connected to each other by a roof; the intermediate space, which is often equal in area to one of the cabins, being left open at the sides, and having the naked earth for a floor, affords a cool and airy retreat, where the family will usually be found in the heat of the day. The roof is composed of from three to five[pg135] logs, laid longitudinally, {71} and extending from end to end of the building; on these are laid the shingles, four or five feet in length; over these are three or four heavy logs, called weight poles, secured at their ends by withes, and by their weight supplying the place of nails.
They have corn-mills, consisting of a large horizontal wooden wheel, moved by a horse, and having a band passed round its periphery to communicate motion to the stone. These are called band-mills, and are the most simple and economical of those in which the power of horses is employed. The solitary planter, who has chosen his place remote from the habitation of any other family, has sometimes a mill of a more primitive character, called a hand-mill, probably differing little from those used among the ancient Egyptians. It consists of two stones; and while one person causes the uppermost to revolve horizontally upon the disk of the other, a second, who is usually a child or a woman, introduces the corn a few grains at a time, through a perforation in the upper stone. Some are content with the still ruder apparatus, consisting of an excavation in the top of a stump; into which the corn is thrown, and brayed with a pestle. This is the method in use among many of the agricultural Indians.
A large species of lampyris is common on the lower part of the Missouri. It is readily distinguished from the smaller species, the common fire-fly, by its mode of coruscating. It emits from three to seven or eight flashes, in rapid succession, then ceases; but shortly after renews its brilliancy. This species appears early in May. We saw many of them in returning by night from the Merameg to St. Louis; but before our arrival at Loutre Island they had disappeared, and were succeeded by great numbers of the[pg136] lampyris pyralis, whose coruscations are inferior in quantity of light, and appear singly.
The black walnut attains, in the Missouri bottoms, {72} its greatest magnitude. Of one, which grew near Loutre Island, there had been made two hundred fence-rails, eleven feet in length, and from four to six inches in thickness. A cotton-tree, in the same neighbourhood, produced thirty thousand shingles, as we were informed by a credible witness.
{73} CHAPTER IV
Settlement of Cote Sans Dessein—Mouths of the Osage—Manito Rocks—Village of Franklin
The left bank of the Missouri at the confluence of Loutre Creek is precipitous, terminating a group of hills which can be distinguished running far to the north-east. Towards the river these fall off in perpendicular precipices, whose bases are concealed in a dense growth of trees and underwood. From their summits huge masses of rock have fallen; and some of these are of such magnitude, that their summits rise above the surrounding forest. One standing opposite the head of the island next above Loutre, is marked with numerous rude drawings, executed by the Indians; some representing men with the heads of bisons, spears, arrows, bows, &c. Half a mile above this rock the Gasconade enters the Missouri from the south. The sources of this river are in the hilly country, near those of some of the larger tributaries of the Yungar fork of the Osage; its waters are transparent, and its current rapid. Traversing a rocky and broken country, it has not the uniformity of current common to many of the branches of the Missouri, but is varied by numerous cataracts and[pg137] rapids, affording convenient stations for water-mills. Some saw-mills have already been erected; and from them a supply of pine-timber is brought to the settlements on the Missouri, that tree being rarely met with here, except in the hilly country. The Gasconade is navigable for a few miles. As might be expected, a projected town is placed at the confluence of this {74} river and the Missouri, and is to be called Gasconade.[103]