Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/146

 of the Quapaws coming in sight, we prevailed on them to land, and, during the interval of our boat's arriving, I amused myself with learning some of their names for the forest trees. While thus engaged, I observed, that many of their sounds were dental and guttural, and that they could not pronounce the th. In the evening we came to a little above the second Pine Bluff.

14th.] We proceeded to Mons. Bartholome's,[115] where Mr. D. stayed about two hours. Mons. B. and the two or three families who are his neighbours are entirely hunters, or in fact Indians in habits, and pay no attention to the cultivation of the soil. These, with two or three families at the first Pine Bluffs, are the {100} remains of the French hunters, whose stations have found a place in the maps of the Arkansa, and they are in all probability the descendants of those ten Frenchmen whom de Tonti left with the Arkansas, on his way up the Mississippi in the year 1685.[116] From this place we meet with no more settlements until our arrival at the Little Rock, 12 miles below which, and about 70 from hence, by the meander-*