Scenes and Adventures in the Semi-Alpine Region of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Situated between the 36th and 40th degrees of north latitude, the Territory enjoys a climate of remarkable serenity, and temperate warmth. That clear blue sky, so much admired by the aborigines, is characteristic of the country; and an atmosphere of unusual dryness, exempts the inhabitants from those pulmonary complaints which are more or less the consequence of a humid atmosphere. A country so situated cannot fail to prove genial to the vegetable kingdom. It would be difficult to point out a section of country which affords a more interesting field for the botanist. Its prairies and barrens are covered with a profusion of wild flowers, shrubs, and plants; and its cultivated fields yield to the hands of the planter, a great proportion of the useful vegetables of the earth. Corn succeeds remarkably; no country surpasses the banks of the Missouri for the vigor of its crops. Wheat, rye, oats, flax, and hemp, are also raised with advantage. Tobacco is an article recently introduced, but is found to succeed well, and the lands are said to be well adapted to its growth. Cotton is raised in the southern part of the Territory for family use, but is not an advantageous crop for market. The climate and soil are also adapted to the growth of the sweet or Carolina potato, and to fruit-trees of various kinds. The peach and the apple are most generally cultivated. Of wild fruits, the woods afford abundance; among which, the grape, persimmon, papaw, pecan, and filbert, are conspicuous. Some varieties of the grape are delicious, and they are very common at the mines, where the inhabitants prepare a wine from them, which has a pleasant flavor.

The population of the Territory, exclusive of the aborigines, has been stated at 46,000, the greatest proportion of whom have emigrated into it within the last five years. They consist of people from various parts of the United States and Europe. A large number are from Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, and New England. The original inhabitants were French and Spanish. There are few of the latter remaining; but the former constitute a respectable proportion of the population.

The principal towns of Missouri are St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St. Charles, and Franklin. Of a lesser size, are Herculaneum, Potosi, New Madrid, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Chariton, Florissant, and Carondelet. St. Louis is the capital of the Territory, and by far the largest town west of Cincinnati, Ohio. It consists of about 550 houses and 5000 inhabitants, and has two banks, three houses for public worship, a post-office, theatre, land-office, and museum, including forty stores, with several mills, manufactories, &c. It is eligibly situated on the western bank of the Mississippi river, eighteen miles below the junction of the Missouri, and, from its commanding situation, is destined to become the emporium of the western country.

Franklin, at Boon's Lick, on the Missouri, has 150 houses, is the thoroughfare for emigrants to that quarter, and is surrounded by one of the richest bodies of land west of the Alleghany mountains, to which emigration is flowing with unexampled rapidity.

St. Charles, situated twenty-one miles above St. Louis, on the Missouri, is also a handsome and flourishing town. The same may be said of Chariton, one hundred and eighty miles above, at the mouth of Chariton river.

No country in the world affords such an extent of inland navigation by its streams, as the basin lying between the Alleghany and Rocky mountains, whose congregated waters are carried to the ocean by those stupendous natural canals, the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. The Mississippi river itself, in whose current all these majestic streams unite, and are discharged into the Mexican gulf, washes the eastern boundaries of the Territory, from the mouth of the river Desmoines to that of the St. Francis, a distance of more than five hundred miles. The Missouri, swelled by its great tributaries, the Yellowstone, Little Missouri, Whitestone, La Platte, Kanzas, and Osage, passes diagonally nearly through its centre, affording on both sides a widely-extended tract of soil transcendently rich, and bearing a luxuriant growth of forest trees and plants, interspersed with prairie. It is navigable, without interruption, from its junction with the Mississippi to its falls, a distance of two thousand miles.

The Ohio is a thousand miles in length from its head, at Pittsburgh, to its junction with the Mississippi, and, in its passage, successively washes the shores of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois—shores which are covered with villages, towns, and settlements, and lined with an industrious and hardy population.

The Illinois is also a stream affording a great length of navigation, and lands of superior quality, and has a natural connection with the great north-western lakes, into which boats may, at certain seasons, uninterruptedly pass.

These rivers, communicating with all parts of the country by their tributaries, afford the advantages of commercial exchange, trade, and manufactures, to a greater extent, and a richer description of country, than is anywhere to be found in Europe, Asia, or Africa.

Of these advantages, the Territory of Missouri, occupying so commanding a position in the geography of the country, must always partake largely, and may, from the wealth already concentrated in its capital, St. Louis, enjoy almost exclusively the trade of the Missouri and upper Mississippi.