480 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



follow the flying phantom ia uncertain. I am already again in the land of the buffa- 

 loes and the fleet-hounding antelopes, and I anticipate, with many other beating 

 Siearts, rare sport and amusement amongst the wild herds ere long. 



We shall start from hence in a few days, and other epistles I may occasionally drop 

 ,yon from terra incognita, for such is the great expanse of country which we expect to 

 'Tange over, and names we are to give, and country to explore, as far as we proceed. 

 We are at this place, on the banks of the Red River, having Texas under our eye on 

 thQ opposite bank. Our encampment is on the point of land between the Red and 

 False Washita Rivers, at their junction, and the country about us is a panorama too 

 beautiful to be ijainted with a pen. It is, like most of the country in these regions, 

 composed of prairie and timber, alternating in the most delightful shapes and propor- 

 tions that the eye of a connoisseur could desire. The verdure is everywhere of the 

 deepest green, and the plains about us are literally speckled with buffalo. We are 

 distant from Fort Gibson about two hundred miles, which distance we accomplished 

 in ten days. 



THE COUNTRY. 



A great part of the way the country is prairie, gracefully undulating, well watered, 

 and continually beautified by copses and patches of timber. On our way my atten- 

 tion was riveted to the tops of some of the ]3rairie bluff's, whose summits I approached 

 with inexpressible delight. I rode to the top of one of these noble mounds in com- 

 pany with my friends. Lieutenant Wheelock and Joseph Chadwick, where wc agreed 

 that our horses instinctively looked and admired. TLi^ey thought not of the rich herb- 

 age that was under their feet, but, with deep-drawn sighs, their necks were loftily 

 ■curved, and their eyes widely stretched over the landscape that was beneath us. 

 From this elevated spot the horizon was boun ded all around us by mountain streaks 

 of blue, softening into azure as they vanished, and the i)ictured vales that interme, 

 diate lay were deepening into green as the eye was returning from its roamings. 

 Beneath us and winding through the waving landscape was seen with peculiar effect 

 the "bold dragoons," marching in beautiful order, forming a train of a mile in length. 

 Baggage wagons and Indians iengagh) helped to lengthen the procession. From the 

 point where we stood the line was seen in miniature, and the undulating hills over 

 which it was bending its way gave it the appearance of a huge black snake, grace- 

 fully gliding over a rich carpet of green. 



This picturesque country of two hundred miles, over which we have passed, be- 

 longs to the Creeks and Choctaws, and affords one of the richest and most desirable 

 countries in the world for agricultural jjursuits. 



THE VEGETATION. 



Scarcely a day has passed in which we have not crossed oak ridges, of several 

 miles in breadth, with a sandy soil and scattering timber, where the ground was 

 almost literally covered with vines producing the greatest profusion of delicious 

 grapes, of five-eighths of an inch in diameter, and hanging in such endless clusters 

 as justly to entitle this singular and solitary wilderness to the style of a vineyard 

 (and ready for the vintage) for many miles together. 



The next hour we would be trailing through broad and verdant valleys of green 

 prairies, into which we had descended, and oftentimes find our progress completely 

 arrested by hundreds of acres of small plum-trees, of four or six feet in height, so 

 closely woven and interlocked together as entirely to dispute our progress, and send- 

 ing us several miles around ; when every bush that was in sight was so loaded with 

 the weight of its delicious wild fruit that they were in many instances literally 

 Avithout leaves on their branches and bent quite to the gronnd. Amongst these, 

 and in patches, were intervening beds of wild roses, wild currants, and gooseberries. 

 And underneath and about them, and occasionally interlocked with them, huge 

 ^rjassea of the prickly pears, and beautiful and tempting wild flowers that sweetened 



