OCR Text |
Show 136 ficult to travel over, that the savages not having an object sufficiently desirable, never attempt to penetrate to this river, and it is supposed to be unknown to the nation. The Cadadoquis (or Cad. .1 ux, as the French pronounce the word) may be con 'ide red as Spanish Indians; they boast, and it is said with truth, that they never have imbrued their hands in the blood of a white man. It is said that the stream of the Little Missouri, some distance from its mouth, flows over a bright splendid bed of mineral of a yellowish white color, (most probably n1artial pyrites) that thirty years ago, several of the inhabitants, hunters, worked upon this mine, and sent a quantity of the ore to the government at New Orleans, and they were prohibited from working any more. There is a great sameness in the appearance of the river banks: the islands are skirted with osier, and hn1nediately 'vithin, on the bank, grows a range of birch trees and some willows; the more elevated banks are covered with cane, among which grows the oak, maple, elm, sycamore, ash, hickory, dog wood, holly, ~ronwood, &c. From the pilot they learned that there IS a body of excellent land on the Little Missouri, particularly on the creek called the " Bayau a terre noire," which falls into it. This land extends to Red river and is connected with the great praries which f?n'!l the hunting grounds of the Cadaux nation, conSistme; of about two hundred warriors. They are warlike., but frequently unable to defend themselves against the tribe of Osages, settled on the Arcansa river, who passing round the mountains at the head of the Washita, and along the prairies, which separate them from the main chain on the west, where the waters of the Red and Acansa rivers have their rise, pass into the Cadaux country, and rob and plunder them. The Water in the river Washita rising, the party are. enabled to pass the numerous ral)ids and shoals which they meet with in the upper country; some of 137 which ~re difficult of as?ent.. The &'eneral height of the main banks of the nver Is from s1x to 'twelve feet ~bove the level of the wa!er; the land is better in qual~ ty, the c~nes, ~c. sh~wmg a. more luxuriant vegetati~ n. . It IS s.ubject to mundatwn, and ~hews a brown S?tl. mtxcd With sand .. Near Cache M~.<;on (Maison's ludmg place) on. the nght, they stopped to examine a supposed ~oal 1111ne: doctor Hunter, and the pilot, set out for this purpose, and at about a mile and a half north-west from the. b~at, in the bed of a creek,* they fo;md a substance S1n11lar to what they had before met w1th under that name, though more advanced towards ? state of perfect coal. At the bottom of the creek, m a phice then dry, was found detdched pieces of from fifty to one hundred pounds " ·eight, adjoining to'" hich lay wood cha11ging into the san1e substance. A stratum of this coal, six inches thick lay on both sides of this little creek, over another df yellow clay, nnd ~overed by one foo.t of gravel; on the gravel is eight mches of loa.m, ,,,.h1ch btars a. few inches of vegetable mould. This ~tratum of coal1s about three feet higher than the water In the crfek, and appears manifestly to have been, at some period, the surface of the ground. The gravel and loam have been deposited there since by the waters: Some pieces of this coal were ver; black m~u sol~d, of an homogeneous appearance, tnuch resembhng p1t coal, but of less specific gravity. It does not appear sufficiently impregnated with bitumen, but may be considered as vegetable Inatter in the progress of transmutation to coal. . Below the "Bayau de l'eau Froide," which runs mto the Washita from the right, the river is one hun~ dred and seventy yards, flowing through tolerably good land. They passed a beautiful forest of pines, and on the 28th fell in with an old Dutch hunter and his party, consisting in all of five pers;ons. 111 Called Coal-mine creek. 18 |