262 CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPKNDlX. 



narrow valleys of the great rivers Missouri, Mississippi, Arliansas, Red 

 river, and some of their principal tributaries; the two largest bodies of 

 fertile soil are the delta of the Mississippi, which is much interspersed with 

 lakes, marshes, and sunken lands, that will require ages to reclaim, and the 

 territory of the Missouri, as limited by the boundaries lately agreed on v.ith 

 the Indians, which bears a strong resemblance to the West Tennessee in 

 some of its features." — pp. 66, 67. 



"A remarkable feature in this western side of the great valley [of the 

 Mississippi] is its deficiency of wood, while the opposite (with the excep- 

 tion of some parts on the north side of the Ohio, where the woods have been 

 burnt,) is a close and deep forest. The woods continue for a short distance 

 up the Mississippi before they disappear, and the grassy plains begin. The 

 banks of the Missouri a)e clo'hed with luxuriant forest trees for three or 

 four hundred miles, after which they gradually become bare, and the trees 

 diminish in size ; at first we find thin groves of the kind of poplar called 

 cotton wood, but of a diminutive growth, intermixed with willov.-s; next 

 the same tree, reduced to half its height, and resembling an orchard tree; 

 after this a thin border of shrubbery is almost the only ornament of the 

 margin of the river. The same thing may be said of the Arkansas and 

 Red river. 



" Taking the distance to the mountains to be about nine hundred miles, 

 of the first two hundred, the larger proportion on the Missouii and its 

 waters is well adapted to agricultural settlements, its soil and conveniences 

 are equal if not superior to those of Tennessee or Illinois ; this tract will 

 include the greater part of the White and Osage rivers, the lower Missouri, 

 and for at least one hundred and fifty miles north of this last river. The 

 proportion of wood gradually lessens to the west, and still more to the 

 north, with the addition that the lands become of an inferior quality. For 

 the next three hundred miles, the country will scarcely admit of compact 

 settlements of any great extent; the wooded parts form trifling exceptions 

 to its general surface, and are never met with but on the margin of the 

 rivers. We may safely lay it down, that after the first two hundred miles, 

 no trees are found on the uplands, save stinted pines or cedars; the rest 

 of the country consists of open plains of vast magnitude, stretching beyond 

 the boundary of the eye, and chequered by numerous waving ridges, which 

 enable the traveller to see his long wearisome journey of several days before 

 him. Yet, it does not seem to me, that the soil of this tract is any where 

 absolutely unproductive ; it is uniformly covered with herbage, though not 

 long and luxuriant like that of the plants nearer the centre of the valley ; 

 it is short and close, but more nutritious to the wild herds, than the coarse 

 grass of the common prairie. This tract has not the dreary barrenness 

 described by Johnson in his Tour to the Hebrides, the green carpet which 

 covers, and the beautiful shrubberies which adorn it, afford relief to the 

 eye. But again, it is very doubtful whether trees could be cultivated; for 

 I observed that the trees ivkick by accident are permitted to groiv, are but 

 dwarfs ; the oak for instance, is not larger than an orchard tree, the plumb 

 is nothing more than a shrub, in some places not exceeding a currant bush. 

 There are, however, scattered over the immense waste, a number of spots 

 which greatly surpass in beauty any thing I have ever seen to the east of the 

 Mississippi. But there are others, again, barren in the extreme, producing 

 nothing in the best soil but hyssop and the prickly pear." — pp. 69, 71. 



"Thus it appears, that with the exception of a belt of one hundred and 

 fifty, or two hundred miles in width, at most, stretching from the Missouri, 

 in a line parallel with the course of the Mississippi, across the Arkansas and 

 Red river to the Sabine, about twice the territory of New Yoi-k, but not a 



