August 24. Our supply of parched corn meal was now entirely exhausted. Since separating from our companions on the Arkansa, we had confined ourselves to the fifth part of a pint each per day, and the discontinuance of this small allowance was at first sensibly felt. We however became gradually accustomed to the hunter's life in its utmost simplicity, eating our bison or bear meat without salt or condiments of any kind, and substituting turkey or venison, both of which we had in the greatest plenty, for bread. The few hungry weeks we had spent about the sources of the river had taught us how to dispense with superfluous luxuries, so the demands of nature could be satisfied.
The inconvenience we felt from another source was more serious. All our clothing had become so dirty as to be offensive both to sight and smell. Uniting in our own persons the professions of traveller, hostler, butcher, and cook, sleeping on the ground by night, and being almost incessantly on the march by day; it is not to be supposed we could give as much attention to personal neatness as might be wished. Notwithstanding this, we had kept ourselves in comfortable condition as long as we had met with water in which to wash our clothes. This had not now been the case for some weeks. The sand of the river [4] bed approaches in character so near to a fluid, that it is in vain to search for or to attempt to produce any considerable inequalities on its surface. The utmost we had been able to accomplish, when we had found it necessary to dig for water, was to scoop a wide and shallow excavation, in the bottom of which a few gills would collect, but in so small a quantity, that not more than a pint could be dipped up at a time; and since the water had appeared above the sand, it was rare to find it more than an inch or two in depth, and so turbid as to be unfit for use. The excessive heat of the weather aggravated the inconvenience resulting from the want of clean clothing, and we were not without fears that our health might suffer.
The common post oak, the white oak, and several other species, with gymnocladus or coffee-bean tree, the cercis and the black walnut, indicate here a soil of very considerable fertility; and game is so abundant, that we have it at any time in our power to kill as many bison, bear, deer, and turkies as we may wish, and it is not without some difficulty we can restrain the hunters from destroying more than sufficient to supply our wants. Our game to-day has been two bears, three deers, one turkey, a large white wolf, and a hare. Plums and grapes are very abundant, affording food to innumerable bears and turkies.
August 25. Our eventless journey affords little to record, unless we were to set down the names of the trees we pass, and of the plants and animals which occur to our notice. Our horses have become so exhausted by the great fatigues of the trip, that we find it necessary to content ourselves with a slower progress than formerly. According to our expectations when we first commenced the descent of this river, we should ere this time have arrived near the settlements; these, however, we can plainly perceive, are still far distant. The country we are traversing has [5] a soil of sufficient fertility to support a dense population; but the want of springs and streams of water must long oppose a serious obstacle to its occupation by permanent residents. A little water is to be seen in the river, but that is stagnant, the rise occasioned by the late rains having subsided.[71]
Leaving our camp at an early hour, we moved down the valley towards the south-east, passing some large and beautiful groves of timber. The fox squirrel, which we had not seen since we left the Missouri, the cardinal and summer red bird, the forked-tail tyrant, and the pileated wood-pecker, with other birds and animals belonging to a woody country, now became frequent. The ravens, common in all the open plains, began to give place to crows, now first noticed. Thickets of oak, elm, and nyssa, began to occur on the hills, and the fertile soil of the low plains to be covered with a dense growth of ambrosia, helianthus, and other heavy weeds. As we were riding forward, at a small distance from the river, two noble bucks and a fawn happened to cross our path, a few rods in front of the party. As the wind blew from them to us, they could not take our scent, and turned to gaze at us without the least appearance of alarm. The leader was shot down by one of the party, when his companion and the fawn, instead of taking fright, came nearer to us, and stood within pistol-shot, closely watching our movements, while the hunters were butchering the one we had killed. This unusual degree of tameness we could discover more or less in all the animals of this region; and it seems to indicate that man, the enemy and destroyer of all things, is less known here than in any portions of the country we have passed. In some parts of our route we have seen the antelopes take fright when we were more than a mile to the windward of them, when they could have received no intimation from us only by sight, yet it does not appear that their powers of [6] vision are in any degree superior to those of most other ruminant animals.
Sunday, August 27th. We were able to select for this day's rest a delightful situation at the confluence of a small creek from the south. The wide valley of the river here presented a pleasing alternation of heavy forests, with small but luxuriant meadows, affording a profuse supply of grass for our horses. The broad hills, swelling gently one above another as they recede from the river, are diversified with nearly the same intermixture of field and forest as in the most highly cultivated portions of the eastern states. Herds of bisons, wild horses, elk and deer, are seen quietly grazing in these extensive and fertile pastures; the habitations and the works of man alone seem wanting to complete the picture of rural abundance.
We found, however, the annoyance of innumerable multitudes of minute, almost invisible, wood ticks, a sufficient counterpart to the advantages of our situation. These insects, unlike the mosquitoes, gnats, and sand flies, are not to be turned aside by a gust of wind or an atmosphere surcharged with smoke, nor does the closest dress of leather afford any protection from their persecutions. The traveller no sooner sets foot among them, than they commence in countless thousands their silent and unseen march; ascending along the feet and legs, they insinuate themselves into every article of dress, and fasten, unperceived, their fangs upon every part of the body. The bite is not felt until the insect has had time to bury the whole of his head, and in the case of the most minute and most troublesome species, nearly his whole body, under the skin, where he fastens himself with such tenacity, that he will sooner suffer his head and body to be dragged apart than relinquish his hold. It would perhaps be advisable, when they are once thoroughly planted, to suffer them to remain unmolested, [7] as the head and claws left under the skin produce more irritation than the living animal; but they excite such intolerable itching, that the finger nails are sure very soon to do all finger nails can do for their destruction. The wound, which was at first almost imperceptible, swells and inflames gradually, and being enlarged by rubbing and scratching, at length discharges a serous fluid, and finally suppurates to such an extent as to carry off the offending substance. If the insect is suffered to remain unmolested, he protracts his feast for some weeks, when he is found to have grown of enormous size, and to have assumed nearly the colour of the skin on which he has been feeding; his limbs do not enlarge, but are almost buried in the mass accumulated on his back, which extending forward bears against the skin, and at last pushes the insect from his hold. Nothing is to be hoped from becoming accustomed to the bite of these wood ticks. On the contrary, by long exposure to their venomous influence, the skin acquires a morbid irritability, which increases in proportion to the frequency and continuance of the evil, until at length the bite of a single tick is sufficient to produce a large and painful phlegmon. This may not be the case with every one; it was so with us.
The burning and smarting of the skin prompted us to bathe and wash whenever we met with water; but we had not long continued this practice, when we perceived it only to augment our sufferings by increasing the irritation it was meant to allay.[72]
It is not on men alone that these blood-thirsty insects fasten themselves. Horses, dogs, and many wild animals are subject to their attacks. On the necks of horses they are observed to attain a very large size. It is, nevertheless, sufficiently evident that, like mosquitoes and other bloodsucking insects, by far the greater number of wood ticks must spend their lives without ever establishing themselves as parasites on any animal, and even without a single [8] opportunity of gratifying that thirst for blood which, as they can exist and perform all the common functions of their life without its agency, would seem to have been given them merely for the annoyance of all who may fall in their way.
Among many other plants, common to the low and fertile parts of the United States, we observed the acalypha, and the splendid lobelia cardinalis, also the cardiospermum halicacabum, sometimes cultivated in the gardens, and said to be a native of the East Indies. It is a delicate climbing vine, conspicuous by its large inflated capsules. The acacia (robinia pseudoacacia), the honey locust, and the ohio æsculus are among the forest trees, but are confined to the low grounds. The common black haw (viburnum lentago), the persimmon or date plum, and a vitis unknown to us, occur frequently, and are all loaded with unripe fruit. The mistletoe, whose range of elevation and latitude seems to correspond very nearly with that of the miegia and the cypress, occurs here parasitic on the branches of elms. In the sandy soils of the hills, the formidable satropha stimulosa is sometimes so frequent as to render the walking difficult; it is covered with long and slender prickles, capable of inflicting a painful and lasting wound, which is said to prove ruinous to the feet of the blacks in the West Indies. The cacti and the bartonias had now disappeared, as also the yucca, the argemone, and most of the plants which had been conspicuous in the country about the mountains. The phytolacca decandria, an almost certain indication of a fertile soil, the diodia tetragonia, a monarda, and several new plants, were collected in an excursion from our encampment. The red sandrock is disclosed in the sides of the hills, but appears less frequently and contains less gypsum than above, though it still retains the same peculiar marks, distinguishing it as the depository of fossil salt; extensive beds of red argillaceous soil occur, and are almost [9] invariably accompanied by saline efflorescences or incrustations. We search in vain, both in the rocks and the soils, for the remains of animals; and it is rare in this salt formation to meet with the traces of organic substances of any kind. The rock itself, though fine and compact, disintegrates rapidly, producing a soil which contains so much alumine as to remain long suspended in water, tinging with its peculiar colour all the rivers of this region. It has been remarked, that the southern tributaries of the Arkansa, particularly the Canadian, the Ne-gracka, and the Ne-sew-ke-tonga, discharge red waters at the time of high freshets, in such quantity as to give a colouring to the Arkansa all the way to its confluence with the Mississippi; from this it is inferred that those rivers have their sources in a region of red sandstone, whose north-eastern limit is not very far removed from the bed of the Arkansa.[73] We attempted to take sets of equal altitudes, but failed on account of a trifling inaccuracy in our watch; the variation of the magnetic needle was found to be the same as on the 25th, namely 11° 30′ east.