34i5 Expedition to the 



Vallies, to the depth of eight or ten feet. These floods are 

 generally very sudden as well as excessive, to such a de- 

 gree, that on some occasions, the water has risen in the 

 course of one night, more than twenty feet. By the sudden 

 rises of the water, the planter, who in the evening thought 

 his family and possessions secure from harm, has been com- 

 pelled, the next morning, to embark with his family, in a 

 canoe, to save themselves from impending destruction, while 

 his habitation, fields, cattle, and all his effects are abandoned 

 to the fury of the torrent. 



The streams rising in the same hilly country and tribu- 

 tary to the Missouri are the following, viz. the Bon Hom- 

 me Creek, the Gasconade, the Osage and its tributaries, the 

 Le Mine, the Blue-water, and several streams tributary to 

 the Konzas river. Upon some of these, as the Bon Homme, 

 Gasconade, and upon some few creeks beside, mills have 

 been constructed, at which much of the lumber of the St. 

 Louis market is sawed. 



This section as yet is but very partially populated, al- 

 though the inhabitants in some portions of it, are consider- 

 ably numerous. The most populous part of the section is 

 the country situated immediately below the mouth of the 

 Missouri, including the town of St. Louis, and the villages 

 of Florissant and Carondelet, Herculaneum, St. Genevieve, 

 Bainbridge, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, St. Michaels, and the 

 country in their vicinity, the Lead Mine tract, including 

 Mine a Berton, Potosi, and Belle View, are considerably po- 

 pulous. The settlements in these places, however, if we ex- 

 cept the sites occupied by the towns and villages just enu- 

 merated, are still very scattering, and but a small proportion 

 of the land susceptible of agriculture is yet under cultivation. 

 Besides these, there are numerous other settlements, and 

 several small villages within this part of the Missouri terri- 

 tory, distributed in various directions, and constituting a 

 verv scanty population. They are scattered jilong the Mis- 

 souri, from its mouth, to Fort Osage, a distance of more 

 than three hundred miles, on the Gasconade, Merameg, St. 

 Francis, Big Black, and several of its tributaries. 



Within the Arjcansa territory there are but few villages^ 

 and the settlements are yet very scattering. The principal 

 villages are tht Post of Arkansa, situated about sixty miles 

 above thf mouth of the river, Davidsonville on Black ri- 

 ver, near the mouth of Eleven Point river, a small village 

 9X the commencement of the high lands on the Arkansa, at 



