340 BOTANY AND PALAEONTOLOGY 



looks like a pavement built by hand. This sandy upland, at its junction 

 with sandstone, loses some of its natural fertility. It becomes dry, too 

 permeable, and easily washed, and produces only eight hundred pounds of 

 cotton, or twenty-five bushels of corn, or twelve bushels of wheat, per acre. 

 Its natural vegetation is the Yellow Pine. When this red upland is flat, 

 it becomes marshy, and forms Post-Oak or grassy flats. They are some- 

 what extensive along the Spadra Creek, near its mouth. When they can 

 be drained, they give one of the best soils of the country. Thus, at the 

 mouth of the same Spadra Creek, this drained land produces annually from 

 sixteen hundred to two thousand pounds of cotton. 



The bottoms of both branches of Piney Creek and of its tributaries, like 

 those of Illinois Bayou, Point-Remove Creek, Cadron, and Alarm Bayou, 

 are generally broad, fertile, and well cultivated, when they are not too wet 

 or marshy. The soil is like that of the Spadra Creek bottoms, a black, 

 deep mould, of the same fertility. The extensive flats of this country, and 

 even the flats and Cypress Swamps of Point-Remove Creek, could be 

 gained for agriculture by a systematic drainage, somewhat costly, it is 

 true. It would be necessary to dig, around a marked area, deep trenches, 

 and to heap the materials along these ditches, like dams around the land, 

 which is thus drained and preserved against the inundations. This system, 

 called the Dutch drainage, because it has not only fertilized a great part of 

 Holland, but reclaimed the land from the sea, has been tried with great 

 advantage along the banks of the Mississippi. I have seen it also attempted 

 in a small way on the banks of the Washita River. The comparison given 

 hereafter of the agricultural produce of this reclaimed soil with that of the 

 dry alluvial upland, will put in full evidence the value of the drainage of 

 the low lands of Arkansas. It is true to assert that the greatest riches of 

 the State still lie buried in the mud of its marshes. 



The sandstone on the top of Carrion-Crow Mountain already shows evi- 

 dent traces of metamorphism. It has become so hard and compact that it 

 gives fire under the hammer like flint, and is very difficult to break. 

 Nevertheless, the vegetation of the ridge is exactly the same as that of the 

 ridges of sandstone formerly seen. The trees are scarce, but the herba- 

 ceous plants cover the whole of the steep and rocky declivity. After 

 crossing Palarm Bayou near its mouth, in Pulaski County, traces of meta- 

 morphism become still more evident by the appearance of thin veins of 

 quartz crossing each other in every direction, and apparently filling nume- 

 rous irregular fissures in the strata of sandstone. Towards Little Rock, 

 the veins of quartz become larger, and after a little, on the other side of 

 Arkansas River, quartz appears to have been entirely substituted for 

 sandstone. But neither on the north nor on the south side of the Arkansas 

 River does the vegetation change its character by this metamorphism of 

 the rocks. The Pines become perhaps more predominant; but the Black 



