the want of good water, of which there is but a small quantity in the creeks, oppose very powerful impediments to its occupancy. The prairies for many miles on each side of the river produce abundance of good pasturage.
Above the mouth of the Osage, the immediate valley of the Missouri gradually expands, embracing some wide bottoms in which are many settlements gradually increasing in the number of inhabitants. The Manito Rocks, and some other precipitous cliffs, are the terminations of low ranges of hills, running in quite to the river. These hills sometimes occasion rapids, and opposite the Manito rocks a small group of islands stretches obliquely across the river, separated by narrow channels in which the current is stronger than below. This group is called the Thousand Islands. Some of the channels are obstructed by collections of floating trees, which usually accumulate about the heads of islands, and are here called rafts. After increasing to a certain extent, portions of these rafts become loosened, and float down the river, covering nearly its whole surface, and greatly impeding and endangering the progress of the ascending boats.
Council Bluffs, the seat of an important military establishment of the United States, about six hundred miles up the Missouri, is a remarkable bank, rising abruptly from the brink of the river to an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet. From the hill tops, a mile in the rear of the Bluffs, is presented a most extensive and beautiful landscape. On the east side of the river, the Bluffs exhibit a chain of peaks, stretching as far as the eye can reach. The river is here and there seen meandering in serpentine folds along its broad valley, chequered with woodlands and prairies, while, at a nearer view, you look down on an extensive plain, interspersed with a few scattered copses or bushes, and terminated at a distance by the Council Bluffs.
Taken in connection with the Mississippi into which it flows, this river is the longest on the globe.7 Its whole course, from its mouth in the gulf of Mexico to its source in the Rocky Mountains, is four thousand four hundred and twenty-four miles, including its windings; and for four thousand three hundred and ninety-six miles of this course it is navigable. From the point of its confluence with the Mississippi to fort Mandan, it is one thousand six hundred and nine miles; to the foot of the rapids at Great Falls two thousand five hundred and seventy-five miles; two thousand six hundred and sixty-four to where it issues from the mountains; two thousand six hundred and ninety to the Gates of the Mountains; three thousand and ninety-six to the extreme navigable point of Jefferson river; and three thousand one hundred and twenty-four miles to its remotest source. In this immense course it receives upwards of fifty large rivers, and one hundred and fifty smaller streams. Its principal tributaries are the Roche Jaune, or Yellowstone, the Kansas, Platte, Osage, Gasconade, Little Missouri, Running Water, Charaton, White, and Milk rivers.
The Yellowstone is the largest of these tributaries. Its sources are in the Rocky Mountains, near those of the Missouri and the Platte, and it may be navigated in canoes almost to its head. It runs first through a mountainous country, but in many parts fertile and well timbered; it then waters a rich, delightful land, broken into valleys and meadows, and well supplied with wood and water, till it reaches near the Missouri open meadows and low grounds, sufficiently timbered on its borders. In the upper country its course is said to be very rapid, but during the two last and largest portions, its current is much more gentle than that of the Missouri. On the sand-bars and along the margin of this river grows the small leafed willow; in the low grounds adjoining are scattered rose bushes three or four feet high, the red-berry, service-berry and redwood. The higher plains are either immediately on the river, in which case they are generally timbered, and have an undergrowth like that of the low grounds, with the addition of the broad leafed willow, gooseberry, purple currant and honeysuckle; or they are between the low grounds and the hills, and for the most part without wood, or any thing except large quantities of wild hyssop, a plant which rises to the height of about two feet, and, like the willow of the sand-bars, is a favorite food of the buffalo, elk, deer, grouse, porcupine, hare, and rabbit.8
The Platte is in fact much more rapid than the Missouri, and drives the current on the northern shore, on which it is constantly encroaching. At some distance below the confluence, the Missouri is two miles wide, with a rapid current of ten miles an hour in some parts, the rapidity increasing as we approach the mouth of the Platte; the velocity of which, combined with the vast quantity of rolling sands which are drifting from it into the Missouri, renders it completely unnavigable, unless for flats or rafts, though the Indians pass it in small flat canoes made of hides, and the Americans have contrived to navigate it by means of keel-boats, which, being constructed to draw but little water, and built upon a small keel, are remarkably well adapted for sailing up rapid and shallow streams. The Platte runs a course of fifteen degrees of longitude, from west to east, or more than eight hundred miles.
The Kansas River has a considerable resemblance to the Missouri, but its current is more moderate, and its water less turbid, except at times of high floods. Its valley, like that of the Missouri, has a deep and fertile soil, bearing forests of cotton-wood, sycamore, and other trees, interspersed with meadows; but in ascending, trees become more and more scattered, and at length disappear almost entirely, the country at its sources being one immense prairie.
The River Osage, so called from the well known tribe of Indians inhabiting its banks, enters the Missouri one hundred and thirty-three miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. Its sources are in the Ozark Mountains. Flowing along the base of the north-western slope of a mountainous range, it receives from the east several rapid and beautiful tributaries. In point of magnitude this river ranks with the Cumberland and Tennessee. It has been represented as navigable for six hundred miles, but this Major Long considers an exaggeration, on account of the great number of shoals and sand-bars in its current. In the lower part of its course it traverses broad and fertile bottom-lands, bearing heavy forests of sycamore and cotton trees.
Charaton River is seventy-five yards wide at its mouth, and navigable at high water one hundred and fifty miles. Half a mile from its confluence with the Missouri, it receives the Little Charaton, also a considerable stream, and navigable for many miles. The Charaton has its source near the De Moyen river of the Mississippi, and traverses a country which is of great importance, both on account of the fertility of its soil, and its inexhaustible mines of gold.
The Arkansas River rises in the Rocky Mountains in north latitude forty-two degrees, near the borders of the territory of the United States and Mexico. It is about two thousand miles in length, running in a direction east south-east. Tributary streams are little known; they are remarkable for being deeply impregnated with salt. That part of Arkansas that traverses the Missouri territory is skirted, in great part, by extensive prairies. Spurs of the Masserne Mountains often reach the river. It may be remarked as singular, that to the extent of upwards of three hundred miles in the lower part of the Arkansas, its valley is confined merely to the stream of the river; the waters of the Washita on one side, and White river on the other, rising almost from the very margin of the Arkansas. The land upon the Arkansas, in the Missouri territory, is in great part alluvial; and where not subject to overflow, excellent. The timber corresponds nearly to that of the state of Mississippi, in similar relative situations.
Red River rises about one hundred miles north-east of Santa Fé, in Mexico, at the base of a range of the Rocky Mountains, called the Caous, and after a very serpentine course of about two thousand five hundred miles, enters the Mississippi in thirty-one degrees fifteen minutes north latitude. There are many streams rising in the same mountains, flowing separately for three or four hundred miles, and then uniting to form the Red river. Of the regions in which the upper waters of these streams lie, but little is known. They are principally inhabited by the Pawnees. When the river enters Louisiana, its south bank is for a long distance the boundary between the United States and Texas. A great part of its course is through delightful prairies of a rich red soil, covered with grass and vines which bear delicious grapes. About a hundred miles above Natchitoches commences what is called the Raft; a swampy expansion of the alluvion to the width of twenty or thirty miles. The river divides into a great number of channels, many of them shallow; and for ages these channels have been becoming clogged with a
