278 Expedition to the 



sible parts, and at length, disappear entirely. We by no 

 means intend to assert that the region in question will not 

 prove of immense importance on account of its mineral trea- 

 sures. Valuable mines of lead and iron are certainly fre- 

 quent in many parts of it, and we can assign no reason why 

 silver, and other metals should not be found in the argillite 

 with quartzy veins, and in the other rocks of the transition 

 period which are known to exist in these mountains. We on- 

 ly intend to give it as our opinion, that there has as yet been 

 no foundation in actual discovery for the belief that such 

 mines do exist. 



The bed of White river, at the place where we crossed it, 

 is paved with pebbles and fragments of a yellowish- white pe- 

 trosiliceous stone, intermixed with rounded masses of trans- 

 parent quartz, and sometimes with pieces of chalcedony. 

 Its water is uncommonly transparent, and this, with the 

 whiteness of its bed, and the brisk motion of the current, 

 gives it an aspect of unusual beauty. The banks are high, 

 and in many places not exposed to inundation. Dense and 

 heavy forests of sycamore and cotton-wood stretch along the 

 river, disclosing here and there at distant intervals, the soli- 

 tary hut, and the circumscribed clearing- of the recent set- 

 tler. Some, who have been no more than two or three years 

 resident upon their present farms, and who commenced in 

 the unbroken forests, have now abundant crops of corn and 

 pumpkins, with large fields of cotton, which is said to equal 

 in quality that of the uplands of (ieorgia and Carolina. 



Few attempts have hitherto been made to cultivate any 

 grain except Indian corn, though the soil is thought to be 

 in many places well adapted to wheat, barley, oats, &c. 



The maize cultivated in the Arkansa territory, and in the 

 southern and western states generally, is the variety called 

 the gourd seed, having a long and compressed kernel, shri- 

 velled at the end when fully ripe, and crops are not uncom- 

 mon, yielding from sixty to ninety bushels per acre. 



