Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 6).djvu/106



Messrs. Bradbury and Nuttal—An excursion—Rupture between the leaders of our parties—Arrival at the Arikara villages.

Hitherto the rapidity of our movements, and the continual anxiety which prevailed amongst us, precluded the possibility of making any distant excursions, or of observing the different objects which came under our notice, with the attention I could have wished. These inconveniences were now all passed, and I now promised myself much pleasure in the examination {117} of the country, and of its productions; as well as much information from the society of two scientific men. I had little or no practical knowledge of natural history myself, and thus far we had passed through a district affording little else to excite attention. The surface of the land—its shape—its appearances—was all that I could pretend to note with accuracy, and this only on the immediate borders of the river. We are now twelve hundred miles from the mouth; the last six hundred, with little variation composed of grassy stepps, with open groves at intervals along the margin of the river, and on the uplands and hollows at a distance from it, a few copses of wood and shrubberies. The hills of no great elevation, scarcely exceeding those on the Ohio, and like that through which this beautiful river holds its course, a region entirely calcareous. The shores of the river are seldom bound by rocks; and where the bluffs or higher banks are precipitous, we seldom see any thing but enormous masses of bare clay, often sixty or an hundred feet in height, which is constantly crumbling into the river. The limestone, freestone, or sandstone, but rarely shews itself on the river. {118}