OF ARKANSAS. 339 



large size in the flats : the Pin Oak, the Swamp Chestnut Oak, the Laurel 

 Oak, and the Black Jack, with the Sweet Gum, the Buttonwood, a great 

 thickness of underwood, the Papaw, the Arrowwood, the Dogwood, and 

 especially a great quantity of vines ; the Bignonia, the Trumpet Flower, 

 the Greenbriers, and, most common of all, the Supple-Jack. 



GEOLOGICAL NATURE OF THE SOIL AND VEGETATION ALONG THE ARKANSAS 

 RIVER, IN FRANKLIN, JOHNSON, POPE, CONWAY, AND PART OF PULASKI 

 COUNTIES. 



The sandy banks of the Arkansas River, from Roseville, Franklin 

 County, to Little Pock, is characterized by the same trees as the banks of 

 the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio River. This bottom, one to 

 two miles broad, has two terraces. The inferior one, or the first bank, as 

 it is sometimes called, has the Cottonwood, the "Willows, the Buttonwood, 

 the Silver Maple, the Ash-leaved Maple, the Kettle Tree, and for under- 

 wood, the Kinnikinnik. The upper bank, about fifteen feet higher, has 

 the Black Walnut, the Red Oak, the Quercitron, the Pin Oak, the Swamp 

 Chestnut Oak, the Sweet Gum, the Red Mulberry, the Linden, and for 

 underwood, Papaw, Sassafras, Greenbriers, Brambles, Elder Bushes, and 

 Grape Vines. The lower bottom is too sandy and too much exposed to 

 overflows for cultivation ; but the upper bottom is fertile, especially culti- 

 vated for cotton. It produces, on an average, one bale of cotton, or fifty 

 bushels of corn, per acre. 



Our road to Little Rock, on the north side of the river, passes through a 

 hilly country of the Millstone Grit formation. The ground is rocky, mostly 

 covered with the Yellow Pine, and the Black, the White, the Spanish 

 Oaks, and the Black Jack. The hills divide the creeks running to the 

 Arkansas River. Most of the bottoms of these creeks are broad, flat, 

 marshy, with a dense vegetation of Willow, Water, and Pin Oaks. Some 

 prairies also are seen, apparently underlaid by the red carboniferous shales ; 

 but they are of small extent. 



From Horsehead Creek to Clarksville, Johnson County, the country 

 changes its physical and geological characters. It is marked by a succes- 

 sion of low hills of the red upland or red shales, and is now nearly all 

 cultivated, especially for cotton. These red shales here generally overlie 

 the black shales of the coal at a distance of fifty to one hundred feet. 

 Thus the deepest creeks are cut through the black shales, and all the hills 

 are formed, at least in the upper part, with the red shales. Sometimes 

 they are overlaid by a bed of flaggy sandstone, which, by the erosion of the 

 soft clay under it, descends along the slopes of the hills, following all the 

 irregularities of the ground by breaking in irregular pieces. In places it 



