OF ARKANSAS. 337 



From the banks of White River, where the Shellbark Hickory, the 

 Sweet Gum, the Maple, with the Ked, Scarlet, Black, and Spanish Oaks 

 abound, the divide, to the high waters of Lee's Creek, is still a broad ridge 

 of the same formation, nearly six hundred feet above White River. This 

 ridge has some farms on its top. It supports a very luxuriant growth of 

 timber. The trees grow here at an equal distance from each other, just as 

 though they had been planted by hand, raising their straight, large trunks 

 to a height of sixty to eighty feet, and supporting immense pyramids of 

 branches, forming thus an arch of plashing boughs. They are of the same 

 species formerly enumerated, with the addition of the thick Shellbark 

 Ilickory, and without any underwood but some shrubs of the Chincapin. 



There is also, in some barren places, a shrub much resembling the White 

 Locust. The leaves are of the same form exactly, but the species appears 

 only in tufts of branches growing up from the ground without a trunk. 

 Perhaps this peculiarity is due to the action of the fire destroying the plant 

 every year, and thus forcing it to grow shrubby. 



The banks or bottoms of the water-courses, running between these high 

 hills of Millstone Grit, are generally narrower than those which cross the 

 subcarboniferous cherry formations. They are consequently rocky, and do 

 not afford as large fertile plains for agriculture. Nevertheless, clearings 

 and plantations are seen along Lee Creek and other creeks of the northern 

 part of Crawford County. 



In the southern part of this county the land becomes flat and the soil 

 more sandy. It is arable, but of middle quality, especially characterized 

 by the Spanish Oak, which there forms by itself whole forests. Between 

 Van Buren and Frog Bayou there are extensive, somewhat marshy, sandy, 

 and argillaceous flats, where this oak constitutes nearly the whole vegeta- 

 tion. Small prairies, apparently barren, enclosed in this forest, are sur- 

 rounded by a beautiful Hawthorn (Crataegus spathulatus), now covered 

 with fruits, and resembling branches of coral. Where the soil is more 

 fertile or less sandy, the Sweet Gum and the Swamp Chestnut Oak replace 

 the Spanish Oak, or are mixed with it. On the banks of the Arkansas 

 River, near Van Buren, the Water Oak (Quercus aquatica) makes its first 

 appearance in fine large trees loaded with a prodigious abundance of acorns. 

 It becomes very common in the marshy bottoms of the southern tributaries 

 of the Arkansas River. It even grows, but always shrubby, along the 

 tortuous course of the creeks of the prairies. 



A great part of Sebastian and of the south of Franklin County is occu- 

 pied by prairies underlaid by clay and shales, and still mostly uncultivated. 

 It is impossible to look at the immense and beautiful plains, which are 

 now used only as pastures for cattle, without regretting that agriculture 

 has not until now been able to procure more out of them. They are too 

 wet, too hard, too clayey, say the farmers, who clear land in the forests 



22 



