Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/149

 fifth Pine Bluff, and the last previous to our arrival at the Little Rock; the fasçade was about the same height and of the same materials as the preceding. Among the pebbles of a gravel beach which I examined were scattered a few fragments of cornelian, similar to those of the Missouri, and abundance of chert or hornstone containing organic impressions of entrocites, caryophillites, &c. here and there were also intermingled a few granitic fragments, which, if not more remotely adventitious, had probably descended from the mountains.—We proceeded to-day about 17 miles.

17th.] This morning we had the disagreeable prospect of ice, and the wind was still from the north-west, but abating. To-day we progressed about 20 miles. The sixth point we passed, since our encampment of the preceding night, was called the Eagle's Nest, which is here seen situated on the opposite side of the bend before us, of six miles in circuit, and only about 100 yards across at the isthmus.

The almost uninterrupted alternation of sand-bars in the wide alluvial plain of the Arkansa afford, as on the Mississippi, great facilities to navigation, either in propelling the boat by poles, or towing with the cordelles. As the bars or beaches advance, so they continually change the common level of the river, and driving the current into the bend with augmenting velocity, the curve becomes at length intersected, and the sand barring up the entrances of the former bed of the river, thus produces the lakes which we find interspersed over the alluvial lands.

In the present state of the water, which is remarkably low, considering the rains which have fallen, it is difficult to proceed with a large merchant boat more than 18 or 20 miles a-day.