Rocky Mountains. 295 



Le Feve towards the east. These particulars are, however, 

 of little importance except as serving to illustrate the cha- 

 racter of that portion of the country. The whole region is 

 strictly mountainous, and its numerous streams are rapid 

 and serpentine, winding their way among abrupt and craggy 

 hills, so thinly covered with pine and post oak, that the so- 

 ber gray of the sandstone, is often the prevailing colour of 

 the landscape. The hills at the sources of the Poteau and 

 the Kiamesha abound in clay slate, and a slaty petrosilex 

 destitute of organic remains.* 



It is remarked by the hunters, that the most remote and 

 elevated sources of all the rivers of this region, are in, or 

 near, extensive woodless plains. As far as this is the case, 

 it would seem to prove that the existing inequalities of the 

 surface, have been produced almost entirely by the cur- 

 rents of water wearing down, and removing continuous por- 

 tions of the horizontally stratified rocks. In districts where 

 secondary rocks only are found, as in the country of the 

 Ohio, there appears little difficulty in attributing this origin 

 to all the hills, and even in the mountainous tract under con- 

 sideration as the most recent rocks, and those of horizontal 

 stratification, occupy the highest portions of the hills, we 

 may perhaps be allowed to suppose, they formerly covered 

 a much greater extent of country than at present, overlaying 

 those portions of rocks of more ancient deposition, which 

 now appear upon the declivities of the mountains. It can- 

 not escape the remark of any person, who shall visit the 

 range of country which we call the Ozark mountains, that 

 the direction of the ridges (particularly of those where sand- 

 stone is the prevailing rock,) conforms to the course of the 

 principal streams. None of the tributaries to the Washita 

 above the Hot Springs, have hitherto been explored. The 

 Little Missouri and the Fourche au Cado, enter it in suc- 



*Nuttairs Travels, p. 150 



