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tract of high prairie, interspersed with groves of timber. It has a deep, rich soil, and abounds with a great variety of wild game. They are enemies to all the other nations except the little Osage band; none venture to settle near them, or presume to enter upon their hunting ground. The ridge of mountains between Arkansas and Red river, form a barrier to the Caddos, and the small nations who rised on those waters; but they sometimes make excursions round the mountains, and descend Red river, spreading terror and depredation among those tribes.
The widely extended, tributary streams of Red river, Arkansas, and Osage, extend into, and water an immense tract of country; and some of the branches of these rivers nearly interlock with each other. The head waters of the Osage river take their rise at no great distance from those of Red river. The general course of the Osage is nearly north, which, after running through, perhaps, the finest tract of country, east of the rocky mountains, for more than six hundred miles, enters the Missouri river, about two hundred miles above its mouth.
The immensely extended prairies commence about forty or fifty miles above the mouth of the Osage, on the western side. They generally approach to a level, but in some parts rise into swelling hills, destitute of wood; in some parts are small copses of wood; in others, forests of considerable extent; and usually the streams of
