Up this river to the dividing ridges between it and the Verdigrise river, the bottom is of some magnitude and importance; but the latter river is bounded here in a narrow bed of prairie hills, affording not more than sufficient timber for firewood for a limited number of inhabitants for a few years. From the Verdigrise our course again lay over gravelly hills and a prairie country, but well watered by the branches of the Verdigrise and White (alias Grand) rivers. From this point to the source of White river there is very little timber, the grass short, prairies high and dry. From the head of White river over the dividing ridge between that and the eastern [Smoky Hill] branch of the Kans river, the ridge is high, dry, and has many appearances of iron ore, and on the west side are some spaw springs [spas]. Here the country is very deficient of water. From the east branch of the Kans river (by our route) to the Pawnee Republic on the Republican fork (see chart), the prairies are low, with high grass; the country abounds with salines, and the earth appears to be impregnated with nitrous and common salts. The immediate border of the Republican fork near the village is high ridges, but this is an exception to the general face of the country. All the country between the forks of the Kans river, a distance of 160 miles, may be called prairie, notwithstanding the borders of woodland which ornament the banks of those streams, but are no more than a line traced on a sheet of paper, when compared to the immense tract of meadow country.
For some distance from the Osage villages you only find deer, then elk, then cabrie, and finally buffalo. But it is worthy of remark that although the male buffaloes were in great abundance, yet in all our route from the Osage to the Pawnees we never saw one female. I acknowledge myself at a loss to determine whether this is to be attributed to the decided preference the savages give to the meat of the females, so that consequently they are almost exterminated in the hunting-grounds of the nations, or to some physical causes; for I afterward discovered the females with young in such immense herds as gave me no reason to believe they yielded to the males in numbers.
From the Pawnee town on the Kansas river to the Arkansaw, the country may almost be termed mountainous; but want of timber gives the hills less claim to the appellation of mountains. They are watered and created, as it were, by the various branches of the Kans river. One of those branches, a stream of considerable magnitude (say 20 yards), which I have designated on the chart by the name of Saline, was so salt, where we crossed it on our route to the Arkansaw, that it salted sufficiently the soup of the meat which my men boiled in it. We were here very eligibly situated; had a fresh spring, issuing from a bank near us; plenty of the necessaries of life all around, viz.: buffalo; a beautiful little sugar-loaf hill, for a lookout post; fine grass for our horses; and a saline in front of us.
As you approach the Arkansaw on this route within 15 or 20 miles, the country appears to be low and swampy; or the land is covered with ponds extending out from the river some distance. The river at the place where I struck it is nearly 500 yards wide, from bank to bank, those banks not more than four feet high, thinly covered with cottonwood. The north side is a swampy low prairie [Cheyenne Bottoms], and the south a sandy sterile desert. Thence, about halfway to the mountains, the country continued with low prairie hills, and scarcely any streams putting into the river; and on the bottom are many bare spots on which, when the sun is in the meridian, is congealed a species of salt sufficiently thick to be accumulated, but so strongly impregnated with nitric qualities as to render it unfit for use until purified. The grass in this district, on the river bottoms, has a great appearance of the grass on our salt marshes. From the first south fork ([Purgatory river] see chart) the borders of the river have more wood, and the hills are higher, until you arrive at its entrance into the mountains. The whole of the timber is cottonwood, from the entrance of the Arkansaw into the mountains to its source, a distance of about 170 miles by the meanders; it is alternately bounded by perpendicular precipices and small, narrow prairies, on which the buffalo and elk have found the means to arrive, and are almost secure from danger from their destroyer—man. In many places the river precipitates itself over rocks, so as at one moment to be visible only in the foaming and boiling of its waters—at the next moment it disappears in the chasms of the overhanging precipices.
The Arkansaw[IV-4] river, taking its meanders agreeably to Lieutenant Wilkinson's survey of the lower part, is 1,981 miles from its entrance into the Mississippi to the mountains, and from thence to its source 192 miles, making its total length 2,173 miles: all of which may be navigated with proper boats, constructed for the purpose, except the 192 miles in the mountains. It has emptying into it several small rivers navigable for 100 miles and upward. Boats bound up the whole length of the navigation should embark at its entrance on the 1st of February, when they would have the fresh [high water] quite to the mountains, and meet with no detention. But if they should start later, they would find the river 1,500 miles up nearly dry. It has one singularity which struck me very forcibly at first view, but which, on reflection, I am induced to believe is the same case with all the rivers which run through a low, dry, sandy soil in warm climates, as I observed it to be the case with the Rio del Norte, viz.: for the extent of 400 or 500 miles before you arrive near the mountains, the bed of the river is extensive and a perfect sand-bar, which at certain seasons is dry, or at least the water is standing in ponds not affording sufficient to procure a running course; but when you come nearer the mountains you find the river contracted, a gravelly bottom, and a deep, navigable stream. From these circumstances it is evident that the sandy soil imbibes all the [not evaporated] waters which the sources project from the mountains, and renders the river in dry seasons less navigable 500 than 200 miles from its source.
The borders of the Arkansaw river may be termed the terrestrial paradise of our territories for the wandering savages. Of all countries ever visited by the footsteps of civilized man, there never was one probably that produced game in greater abundance. We know that the manners and morals of the erratic nations are such (the reasons I leave to be given by the ontologists) as never to give them a numerous population; and I believe that there are buffalo, elk, and deer sufficient on the banks of the Arkansaw alone, if used without waste, to feed all the savages in the United States territory one century. By the route of the Arkansaw and the Rio Colorado of California, I am confident in asserting, if my information from Spanish gentlemen of information is correct, there can be established the best communication, on this side of the Isthmus of Darien, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; as, admitting the utmost, the land carriage would not be more than 200 miles, and the route may be made quite as eligible as our public highways over the Alleghany mountains. The Rio Colorado is to the great Gulph of California what the Mississippi is to the Gulph of Mexico, and is navigable for ships of considerable burden, to opposite the upper parts of the province of Senora.
From the Arkansaw to the Rio del Norte, by the route I passed, the country was covered with mountains and small prairies, as per chart; but the game became much more scarce, owing to the vicinity of the Spanish Indians and the Spaniards themselves.
In this western traverse of Louisiana, the following general observations may be made, viz.: that from the Missouri to the head of the [Little] Osage river, a distance in a straight line of probably 300 miles, the country will admit of a numerous, extensive, and compact population; thence, on the rivers Kanses, La Platte, Arkansaw, and their various branches, it appears to me to be only possible to introduce a limited population on their banks. The inhabitants would find it most to their advantage to pay attention to the multiplication of cattle, horses, sheep, and goats, all of which they can raise in abundance, the earth producing spontaneously sufficient for their support, both winter and summer, by which means their herds might become immensely numerous; but the wood now in the country would not be sufficient for a moderate share of population more than 15 years, and it would be out of the question to think of using any of it in manufactures; consequently, the houses would be built entirely of mud-brick [adobe], like those in New Spain, or of the brick manufactured with fire. But possibly time may make the discovery of coal-mines, which would render the country habitable.
The source of La Platte is situated in the same chain of mountains with the Arkansaw (see chart), and comes from that grand reservoir of snows and fountains which gives birth on its northeastern side to the Red river of the Missouri (the yellow stone river of Lewis [and Clark], its great southwestern branch), and La Platte; on its southwestern side it produces the Rio Colorado of California; on its east the Arkansaw; and on its south the Rio del Norte of North Mexico. I have no hesitation in asserting that I can take a position in the mountains, whence I can visit the source of any of those rivers in one day.[IV-5]
Numerous have been the hypotheses formed by various naturalists to account for the vast tract of untimbered country which lies between the waters of the Missouri, Mississippi, and the Western Ocean, from the mouth of the latter river to 48° north latitude. Although not flattering myself to be able to elucidate that which numbers of highly scientific characters have acknowledged to be beyond their depth of research, still I would not think I had done my country justice did I not give birth to what few lights my examination of those internal deserts has enabled me to acquire. In that vast country of which I speak, we find the soil generally dry and sandy, with gravel, and discover that the moment we approach a stream the land becomes more humid, with small timber. I therefore conclude that this country never was timbered; as, from the earliest age the aridity of the soil, having so few water-courses running through it, and they being principally dry in summer, has never afforded moisture sufficient to support the growth of timber. In all timbered land the annual discharge of the leaves, with the continual decay of old trees and branches, creates a manure and moisture, which is preserved from the heat of the sun not being permitted to direct his rays perpendicularly, but only to shed them obliquely through the foliage. But here a barren soil, parched and dried up for eight months in the year, presents neither moisture nor nutrition sufficient to nourish the timber. These vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa; for I saw in my route, in various places, tracts of many leagues where the wind had thrown up the sand in all the fanciful form of the ocean's rolling wave, and on which not a speck of vegetable matter existed.