My canoe was landed at noon, at the base of these picturesque hills—and there rested till the next morning. As soon as we were ashore, I scrambled to their summits, and beheld, even to a line, what the reader has before him in plates 119 and 120. I took my easel, and canvass and brushes, to the top of the bluff, and painted the two views from the same spot; the one looking up, and the other down the river. The reader, by imagining these hills to be five or six hundred feet high, and every foot of them, as far as they can be discovered in distance, covered with a vivid green turf, whilst the sun is gilding one side, and throwing a cool shadow on the other, will be enabled to form something like an adequate idea of the shores of the Missouri. From this enchanting spot there was nothing to arrest the eye from ranging over its waters for the distance of twenty or thirty miles, where it quietly glides between its barriers, formed of thousands of green and gracefully sloping hills, with its rich and alluvial meadows, and woodlands—and its hundred islands, covered with stately cotton-wood.
In these two views, the reader has a fair account of the general character of the Upper Missouri; and by turning back to plate 39, Vol. I., which I have already described, he will at once see the process by which this wonderful formation has been produced. In that plate will be seen the manner in which the rains are wearing down the clay-bluffs, cutting gullies or sluices behind them, and leaving them at last to stand out in relief, in these rounded and graceful forms, until in time they get seeded over, and nourish a growth of green grass on their sides, which forms a turf, and protects their surface, preserving them for centuries, in the forms that are here seen. The tops of the highest of these bluffs rise nearly up to the summit level of the prairies, which is found as soon as one travels a mile or so from the river, amongst these picturesque groups, and comes out at their top; from whence the country goes off to the East and the West, with an almost perfectly level surface.
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These two views were taken about thirty miles above the village of the Puncahs, and five miles above “the Tower;” the name given by the travellers through the country, to a high and remarkable clay bluff, rising to the height of some hundreds of feet from the water, and having in distance, the castellated appearance of a fortification.
My canoe was not unmoored from the shores of this lovely spot for two days, except for the purpose of crossing the river; which I several times did, to ascend and examine the hills on the opposite side. I had Ba’tiste and Bogard with me on the tops of these green carpeted bluffs, and tried in vain to make them see the beauty of scenes that were about us. They dropped asleep, and I strolled and contemplated alone; clambering “up one hill” and sliding or running “down another,” with no other living being in sight, save now and then a bristling wolf, which, from my approach, was reluctantly retreating from his shady lair—or sneaking behind me and smelling on my track.
Whilst strolling about on the western bank of the river at this place, I found the ancient site of an Indian village, which from the character of the marks, I am sure was once the residence of the Mandans. I said in a former Letter, when speaking of the Mandans, that within the recollection of some of their oldest men, they lived some sixty or eighty miles down the river from the place of their present residence; and that they then lived in nine villages. On my way down, I became fully convinced of the fact; having landed my canoe, and examined the ground where the foundation of every wigwam can yet be distinctly seen. At that time, they must have been much more numerous than at present, from the many marks they have left, as well as from their own representations.