to hunt for bison; but after walking about nine miles, going and returning, were not fortunate enough to find any game. The grass was now so loaded with honey dew as to give our mocasins and pantaloons the appearance of being soaked in oil, seeming totally inexplicable as the produce of aphides, and rather attributable to some vitiation in the proper juices of the plant, taking place apparently at the ultimate period of vegetative vigour, and being more or less copious in proportion to the prevailing degree of heat. The cane brake which we here crossed by a hunting path, was about half a league wide, and flanked by low hills, whose declivities gently subside into the adjoining prairie, of about 20 miles in circuit, and five in width. Here the Cavaniol and Sugar-loaf mountains appeared, at least the latter, not more than 15 or 18 miles distant, towards the south-east. We proceeded about five miles above the creek, and spent the night on the margin of a sand bar, according to our usual custom, to avoid the musquetoes.
10th.] I went out this morning on the second bar we arrived at, which continued uninterruptedly for about five miles; we found a few Chicasaw plumbs, with natural orchards of which every beach abounds, but this year, in consequence of the late frosts, they were generally destitute of fruit. The current of the {168} Arkansa was here unusually rapid; on the right hand side the water was clear, but on the left, red and muddy. The clear water issued from the Illinois river, to which we were now contiguous. Among the scattered boulders and gravel of the bar, there were fragments of limestone and petrosilex, containing organic remains, also pebbles of chalcedony; we likewise saw specimens of coal, accompanied by the usual carbonaceous, tessellated vegetable, or zoophitic
