70 Expedition to the 



this operation, numerous trees, commonly cottonwoods and 

 willows are overturned into the water. 



The forests, on the low grounds immediately in the vi- 

 cinity of the Missouri, are remarkably dense ; but in many 

 instances, the young willows and poplars, ( which are the 

 first and almost the only trees, that spring up on the lands 

 left naked by the river) have not attained half their ordina- 

 ry dimensions, before, by another change in the direction of 

 the current, they are undermined and precipitated down, to 

 be borne away by the river. The growth of the cotton tree 

 is very rapid, that of the salix angustata, the most common 

 of the willows found here, is more tardy, as it never attains to 

 great size. The seeds of both these trees are produced in 

 the greatest profusion, and ripened early in the summer, and 

 being furnished by nature, with an apparatus to ensure their 

 wide dissemination they have extended themselves, and tak- 

 en root in the fertile lands along all the ramifications of the 

 Mississippi, prevailing almost to the exclusion of other trees. 

 Charboniere is on the right bank of the Missouri. This 

 name was given it by the boatmen, and the earliest settlers, 

 on account of several narrow beds of coal, which appear a few 

 feet from the water's edge, at the base of a hiyh cliff of soft 

 sandstone. The smell of sulphur is very perceptible along 

 the bank of the river, occasioned doubtless, by the decomposi- 

 tion of pyrites, in the exposed parts of the coal beds. Some 

 small masses of sulphate of lime also occur, and have proba- 

 bly derived their origin from the same source. 



At St. Charles we were joined by Maj. OFallon, agent 

 for Indian affairs in Missouri, and his interpreter, Mr John 

 Dougherty, who had travelled by land from St. Louis. When 

 Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, the town of St. 

 Charles was said to contain one hundred houses, the inhabi- 

 tants deriving their support principally from the Indian 

 trade. This source having in a great measure failed, on ac- 

 count of the disappearance of the aborigines, before the ra- 



