Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/295

 ore, in flattened, contorted, and cellular {222} masses, scattered about in profusion; much of it appeared to be pyrites, other masses more or less argillaceous and siliceous. Here, on the portions of the high bank which had sunk down by the undermining of the current, we saw the wax-myrtle of the Atlantic sea-coast.

10th.] This evening we arrived near to the termination of the second Pine Bluffs, which continue along the river for nearly two miles. We passed through seven bends of the river, and came about 27 miles. The frost was now succeeded by mild and showery weather, and the bald eagles (Falco leucocephalus) were already nestling, chusing the loftiest poplars for their eyries.

11th.] Soon after breakfast we came again in sight of the houses of the French hunters Cusot and Bartolemé, and found also two families from Curran's settlement encamped here, and about to settle. I here obtained two fragments of fossil shells, apparently some species of oyster, one of which was traversed with illinitions of crystallized carbonate of lime, and contained specks of bovey coal, from which I concluded them to have been washed out of the Bluffs above. Besides these I was also shewn a small conch-shell, not apparently altered from its natural state, and probably disinterred from some tumulus. Some time after dark we arrived at Mr. Boun's, a metif or half Quapaw, and interpreter to the nation, who lived at the first of the Pine Bluffs. Two or three other metif families resided also in the neighbourhood.

On the 12th we arrived at Monsieur Dardennes', and to-day experienced a keen north-western wind. Water froze the instant it touched the ground.

13th.] The weather still freezing. In the evening we passed Mr. Harrington's, a farmer in very comfortable