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 rivers take their rise, and flow in opposite directions;[56] the Colorado of California, Rio del Norte, the Arkansas, the Platte, and the Roche Jaune, (yellow stone.) It will be to the geologist an interesting work, to trace the various ridges, connexions, spurs and dependencies of these mountains. There is a long chain of hills, which generally separate the waters of the Missouri from those of the Arkansas and Mississippi, and which are commonly called the Black mountains. The hills in the White river country, and those west of the Mississippi, towards the head of the St. Francis and the Maramek, so abundant in minerals, may be dependencies of the Black mountains. There are high rugged hills, approaching to mountains, between the upper part of the Washita river and the Arkansas, of which {227} some account may be found in Hunter and Dunbar's voyage up the Washita.[57]

Taking the distance from the Mississippi to the mountains, to be about nine hundred miles, of the first two hundred miles, the larger proportion is fit for settlements. There is a great deal of well timbered land and the soil is generally good; this quality, however, diminishes as we ascend north, where the soil becomes unproductive and almost barren, and as we advance westward the land becomes more bare of woods. For the next three hundred miles the country can scarcely be said to admit of settlements; the wooded parts form but trifling exceptions to its general appearance, and are seldom found except in the neighbourhood of streams; we may safely lay it down as a general remark, that after