Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/587

 tall trees grew untouched upon its rolling hills, and its numerous little streams, now converted into sewers, flowed murmuring beneath overhanging ferns to mingle with the river.

When it was first visited by white men no one knows. During 1541 and 1542 De Soto marched back and forth through the region, seeking for gold with a Spaniard's hunger; but the accounts of his wanderings are uncertain and confused, and the blood of the unhappy natives which once marked out his pathway has long since mingled with the dust.

Then for almost two hundred years the solitude of the wilderness remained unbroken. At rare intervals the French voyageurs went up and down the Mississippi, establishing forts and trading-posts; but the great river so engrossed their attention that they left its tributaries unexplored. At length, in 1722, a French officer, Bernard de la Harpe, ascended the Arkansas, and on April 9th reached the picturesque heights of Big Rock, where the army post is now located. Standing upon the brink of its lofty precipice he watched the river winding far away in the distance between the mountains of the West, and dreamed of the mighty empire that France should build up