The swift passing panorama of the avenue is ofttimes varied by a picturesque group of Chocktaws or Cherokees, with grotesque costume, this place being their principal rendezvous. Just at the edge of the town is a National Cemetery of great natural beauty, with but little of the stiff regularity which usually characterizes such places.
We found a great lack of educational advantages throughout the entire State of Arkansas, there being no public schools, and the private ones few in number and poor in character; but it has never been my good fortune to meet kinder hearts than were encountered among the masses.
At Arkadelphia we had a regular Arkansas deluge, and the first class hotel of this flourishing town of two thousand souls would indeed have been a poor ark for Father Noah and his family. Its walls were lathed but not plastered, and from our apartment we had an extended view of the entire floor.
Our furniture consisted of two wooden chairs, a box turned upside down for a toilet-stand, a rickety bedstead, with unmusical creak, a tumble-down lounge, and dismal, but genuine tallow dip. In these quarters we spent four days, during which time the rain poured with unremitting constancy.
In the parlor of the same edifice was an elegant piano, and magnificently dressed ladies, and our constant amazement was, how, in this strange country, extremes could so amicably meet.
I found in Arkadelphia two blind gentlemen, who were prosperous merchants; and to me, this spoke volumes for a community who would so generously sustain the afflicted rather than allow them the condescension of beggary.
We next visited Hope, a town of three thousand inhabitants, yet having numbered but three years of existence; and while these people are considered so slow in progression, this fact indicated a considerable degree of Yankee go-a-head activity. This town is one of the important cotton markets of the State, which branch of trade imparts an additional business activity.
We turned toward Hot Springs, the Baden of America, and when within twenty miles of this wonderful place we encountered a throng of that class of human pests known as "hotel runners," thick as bees, and more stingingly annoying, for they especially abounded in low jests and ribald stories which grate so harshly upon sensitive ears. It would certainly be an act of philanthropy, both to the hotels and their patrons, to take some measure for the suppression of this nuisance.
The approach to Hot Springs, and the first glimpse of the stream, smoking as if its bed rested upon some subterranean fire, are in themselves awe-inspiring. The valley is narrowed to the limits of three hundred feet, and the road winds gracefully around the base of the mountain, upon whose top the cold spring furnishes a better beverage than iced champagne; while close by its side bubbles the boiling spring, in which eggs can be cooked to perfection; and with a little seasoning of salt and pepper, the most luscious soup can be improvized, while the boiling water au naturale can be drunk in copious, life-giving draughts.
The hotels are ranged upon either side of the road, and have all the necessary bathing appointments. Among the many novelties to a stranger was the process of dressing chicken, which was their staple article of food. The hot stream was the only necessary cauldron for the scalding process, while the feathers were thrown into the swift current, and rapidly carried away by the natural sewerage, a decidedly labor-saving process, and somewhat characteristic of the locality and its native cooks.