June 2nd, we proceeded thirty-five miles, tired with the perpetual sameness of low banks, willow islands and sand bars, we then came to a settlement, the first below Big Prairie, from whence it is one hundred and thirty-six miles, and just fifteen leagues below Arkansas river.
This settlement was commenced two months ago by a Mons. Malbrock, from Arkansas, who has a large family and several negroes. He has named his place Ville Aussipot, and he is clearing away {274} with spirit, having already opened twelve or fourteen acres. His mode of providing meal for his people, was by pounding corn in a wooden mortar, with a wooden pestle, fixed to a spring sweep.
The neighbouring lands are all parcelled out and granted to settlers, who are to commence directly. There is a fine prairie a league inland. The river bank is sufficiently high to be secure from inundation, being now six feet above the surface of the water, and the soil is very fine.
We stopped for the night on the right bank, seven miles below Mr. Malbrock’s.
FOOTNOTES:
[194] Sylvanus Phillips later platted and became chief owner of Helena, a town named for his daughter, about ten miles below the mouth of St. Francis River. Phillips County, Arkansas, takes its name from this pioneer.—Ed.
[195] Arkansas Post (or Poste aux Arkansas) was accounted the oldest white settlement in the lower Mississippi Valley. Tonty, on his voyage of relief in search of La Salle (1686), ascended the Arkansas River to a village of a tribe by the same name, where he left a detachment of six men headed by Couture. Thither, the following year, came the survivors of La Salle’s ill-fated Texas colony, and related the assassination of their leader. The post was maintained as a trading centre and Jesuit mission throughout the French occupation, and survived an unexpected attack by the Chickasaws in 1748. The Jesuits abandoned it as an unfruitful field in 1763. During the Spanish occupation, the importance of this post as a trading station increased. Pierre Laclède, founder of St. Louis, had a branch warehouse at Arkansas Post, and died here in 1778. Upon the American occupation, civil government was established (1804), and it was the capital for the territory until 1820, when superseded by Little Rock. Arkansas Post was captured by the Union forces from the Confederates, in 1863. It is now a small town about seventy-five miles southeast of Little Rock.—Ed.
CHAPTER XLVII
Grand lake—Seary’s island—Extraordinary effect of the power of the current—Musquitoe island—Crow’s nest island—Humorous anecdote of a Carolinean—A battle royal—New settlements—Fine situations—Cuming’s island.
June 3d, after proceeding three miles, the river was narrowed by a point of willows on the right to a quarter of a mile wide, and five miles after, it widens gradually to half a mile.