THE BOIS-D’ARc. 199 
In many of the rich bottoms from the Ca- 
nadian to Red River, for a distance of one or 
two hundred miles west of the frontier, is 
found the celebrated bois-d’arc (literally, bow- 
wood), usually corrupted in pronunciation to 
bowdark. Tt was so bina by the French on 
account of its peculiar fitness for bows. is 
tree is sometimes found with a trunk two 
or three feet in diameter, but, being much 
branched, it is rarely over forty or fifty feet 
high. The leaves are large, and it bears a 
fruit a little resembling the orange in general 
appearance, though rougher and larger, being 
four or five inches in diameter; but it is not 
used for food. The wood is of a ‘beautiful light 
orange color, and, though coarse, is suscep- 
tible of polish. It is one of the hardest, firm- 
est and most durable of timbers, and is much 
used by wagon-makers and millwrights, as 
well as by the wild Indians, who make bows 
of the younger growths. 
On the Arkansas and especially its southern 
tributaries as far west as the Verdigris, and up 
those of Red River nearly to the False Washi- 
ta, the bottoms are mostly covered with cane. 
And scattered over é all the south to to about the 
fra ahon nds, 
wWetALLN 
whisk erows here in ‘every kind of soil and 
lo 
“Tales t Cross Timbers, of which fre- 
quent mention has been made, extend from the 
or perhaps from the Colorado of Texas, 
across the sources of Trinity, traversing Red 
River above the False Washita, and thence 
nl 
