444 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



black oak barrens, and across a small sandy level prairie, 

 I passed through a couple of miles of Cypress swamp, 

 along a road the like of which would be a curiosity in any 

 civilized country. I do not blame the inhabitants here 

 for not making a better road, for if I may judge from 

 their looks, they will soon need to travel but a short road, 

 and that upon a conveyance that never jolts the rider. 

 Although much of this county is very rich, and produces 

 great crops of corn and some wheat, yet there is so much 

 swamp that it is decidedly sickly. 



On Monday, and in a dull, gloomy and rainy day, I had 

 to drag through 14 miles more of swamp and overflow- 

 ing land to reach the Missouri j 1 and this is the only road 

 by which half the inhabitants can reach Benton, their 

 county seat. And over this same road, the emigrants 

 from Kentucky, Tennessee, &c, going to Missouri and 

 Arkansas, have to drag their loads of "plunder." I met 

 many of them in wagons, in North Carolina carts, and 

 on pack horses — the latter being generally packed with a 

 most liberal supply of children and their mothers — "I 

 reckon" — and as it "takes all sorts of folks to make a 

 world," I am constrained to think that some of those I 

 met are some of the "all sorts." "The ladies" in particu- 

 lar, riding in a very primitive way, such as was common 

 before the invention of side-saddles, looked a good deal 

 "sorter like" the coarse filling with which the great west- 

 ern web of wilderness is woven. 



After a toilsome day's work of 18 miles, I was under 

 the necessity of stopping 2 miles short of the ferry at the 

 "iron banks," where I was to cross the Missouri. It had 

 been my intention to have gone from Benton to New Mad- 

 rid, by which I should have avoided these 16 miles of 

 swamp, but I learned that if I crossed at New Madrid, 

 that I should be caught in a trap in a district of country 

 lying between there and Memphis, that is known as the 

 "shakes," from having been shaken by earthquakes into 



1 Here and in the following paragraph, Robinson obviously meant 

 the Mississippi River. 



