Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/291

 Having passed several islands, we saw on the right the settlement of one Biddle, being the first on the river since four miles below New Madrid.

Four miles lower we landed in the skiff at the town of Little Prairie on the right, containing twenty-four low houses and cabins, scattered on a fine and pleasant plain inhabited chiefly by French creoles from Canada and Illinois. We were informed that there were several Anglo-American farmers all round in a circle of ten miles. We stopped at a tavern and store kept by a European Frenchman, where we got some necessaries.

Every thing is excessively dear here, as in New Madrid—butter a quarter of a dollar per pound, milk half a dollar per gallon, eggs a quarter of a dollar a dozen, and fowls half to three quarters of a dollar each.

We found here five lumber loaded boats owned by Mr. Holmes of Meadville, which had left Pittsburgh about the 20th of March. Three of them had been stove, and they were going to unload and repair them.

Continuing to coast along in the skiff, while our ark fell down the river with the current, we landed about a mile below Little Prairie, at an Indian camp formed by the crews of three canoes, all Delawares except one Chocktaw. They had sold their peltry {258} and were now enjoying their whiskey, of which they had made such liberal use as to be most of them quite drunk. They did not seem to like our intrusion, but on our demanding whiskey from them, and drinking with them, they became more social.

Two miles below the Indian camp we again overtook our boat from which we had been absent the last fourteen miles, and seven miles lower, met a canoe with two Indians, who wanted to sell us skins.—After passing several islands as far as No. 21, of Mr. Cramer's Navigator, in twelve miles farther, we came to one not mentioned in the Navigator,