APPENDIX. 
294- 
circumference full 30 miles—from the appearance of driftwood 
that is scattered over, it would seem that the wnole plain is at 
times inundated^ by the overflowing of the streams that pass near 
it. This plain is entirely covered in dry hot weather, from two 
to six inches deep, with a crust of beautiful clean white salt, 
of a quality rather superior to the imported blown salt; it 
bears a striking resemblance to a field of brilliant snow after a 
rain, with a light crust on its top. On a bright sunny morning, 
the appearance of this natural curiosity is highly picturesque. 
It possesses the quality of looming or magnifying objects, and 
this in a very striking degree, making the small billets of wood 
appear as formidable as trees. Numbers of buffaloe werfc on the 
plain. The Saline is environed by a strip of marshy prairie with 
a few scattering trees, mostly of cotton wood. Behind, there is 
a range of sand hills, some of which are perfectly naked, others 
thinly clothed with verdure, and dwarf plum bushes, not more 
than thirty inches in height, from which we procured abundance 
of the most delicious plums I ever tasted. .The distance to a na¬ 
vigable branch of the Arkansas, about 80 miles, the country to¬ 
lerably level, and the water courses easily passed. 
About 60 miles S. W. from this, I came to the Saline, the 
whole of this distance lying over a country remarkably rugged 
and broken, affording the most romantic and picturesque views 
imaginable. It is a tract of about 75 miles square, in which 
nature has displayed a great variety of the most strange and 
whimsical vagaries. It is an assemblage of beautiful meadows, 
verdant ridges, and rude misshapen piles of red clay thrown to¬ 
gether in the utmost apparent confusion, yet, affording the most 
pleasing harmonies, and presenting in every direction an endless 
variety of curious and interesting objects. After winding along 
for a few miles on the high ridges, you suddenly descend an al¬ 
most perpendicular declivity of rocks and clay, into a series of 
level fertile meadows, watered by some beautiful rivulets, and 
here and there adorned with shrubby cotton trees, elms and ce¬ 
dars. These meadows are divided by chains formed of red clay, 
and huge masses of gypsum, with here and there a pyramid ot 
gravel. One might imagine himself surrounded by the ruins 
©f some ancient city, and that the plains had sunk by some con- 
