Tuesday, 15th. Much lightning occurred during the night, pervading the eastern heavens nearly from N. to S. At a distance of a mile from encampment, we crossed a timbered ravine, and further on, a small creek; when, upon looking back on our right, we saw the appearance of an Indian village situated near the confluence of the Little Arkansa with the river. Inspired with hope, we turned towards the spot; but on arriving there, it proved to be a large hunting camp, which had probably been occupied during the preceding season. It exhibited a more permanent aspect than three others that occurred on our route of the three past days; much bark covered the boweries; and a few pumpkins, water-melons, and some maize, the seeds of which had fallen from unknown hands, were fortuitously growing as well within as without the rude frail tenements. Of the maize, we collected enough to furnish out a very slight but extremely grateful repast, and the water-melons were eaten in their unripe state.
Resuming our ride, we crossed three branches of a creek,[113] in one of which two of the horses entered in a part not fordable, and as the banks were steep and miry, it was with much exertion and delay that they [79] were recovered. Oak and walnut trees abound upon this creek, besides elm, ash, and locust. A king-fisher (alcedo alcyon) was also seen. The extreme heat was rather more intense than that of the preceding day, the mercurial column standing for a time at 97½ degrees. The bluffs, hitherto more or less remote from the bed of the river, now approach it so closely as to render it necessary to pursue our course over them. On ascending upon the elevated prairie, we observed that it had assumed a different appearance, in point of fertility, from that which we had been familiar with nearer to the mountains; and although the soil is not yet entirely concealed from the view by its produce, yet the grass is from six inches to one foot in height.
But five bisons were seen to-day, a privation which communicates a solitary air to this region, when compared with the teeming plains over which we have passed, and of which these animals formed the chief feature.
Our distance this day on a straight line may be estimated at 14¼ miles, though the actual travelled distance was much more considerable.
During the space of one month, our only regular food, besides meat, has been coarsely ground parched maize meal, of which a ration of one gill per day was shared to each individual. This quantity was thrown into common stock, and boiled with the meat, into a kind of soup. This meal is nutritious, portable, not subject to spoil by keeping a reasonable length of time, and is probably to be preferred, as a substitute for bread, to other succedanea, by travellers in an uncivilised country. Our store of meal, however, was now exhausted, and we were obliged to resort to a small quantity of mouldy crumbs of biscuit, which had been treasured up for times of need.
At night almost incessant lightning coruscated in the north-western horizon.
Wednesday, 16th. Several showers of rain, with much thunder and vivid lightning, fell during the [80] night, and the early morning continued showery; but the clouds were evidently undergoing the change from nimbus to cirrostratus, in this instance the harbingers of a fine day. Several ravines occurred on the morning's journey, containing, in the deeper parts of their beds, pools of standing water. The first was of considerable size, with steep banks, and thickly wooded, as far up its course as the vision extended; the trees were principally oak, some walnut, elm, ash, mulberry, button-wood, cotton-wood, and willow.
A horse presented by the Kiawa chief could not be prevailed upon to traverse this occasional watercourse; he evaded the attempts of several men to urge him forward; and after being thus fruitlessly detained a considerable space of time, the animal was shot. If he had been abandoned, he must have perished for want of water, having been accidentally deprived of sight, and more certainly, as that fluid, so indispensable for the support of the animal's life, was here of difficult access.
At the ravine, which served as a halting place during the mid-day heats, we first observed the plant familiarly known in the settlements by the name of poke (phytolacca decandria), reclining over the banks with its fecundity, in the midst of a crowded assemblage of bushes, and partially shading a limpid pool that mantled a rocky bed below. A large species of mushroom, of the puff-ball kind, was not uncommon, nearly equal in size to a man's head.