The Arkansas advocate., 1835-04-17

Red River, running into t below the Wash
 ta. The country Is beautifully diversified hills covered with oak and hickory, rol- ling prairies with their tall swsrthy grass waving in the wind. and here and there creek bottoms, flush with greenuess. In parts, however, the country has d bleak and barren appearance, which becomes much more marked when the sun scorches up the prairies, and the hot fire runs over them, leaving only bleak, black and barren wastes, undalating in gloomy loneliness, and here and there spotted with clump of trees, leafless. grey and gnarled, perhaps scorch- ed with the fire which has gone over the prairie.
 As they proceeded farther to the west, the praries became larger, and bore in a greater degree that look of stern silence which hardly ever fails to impress itself on any one who first enters plain to which he can see no bounds. Crossing Boggy at the ford below the Forks, just beyond which the road lost itself in the prairie, they kept on to the ford of the creek calico Blue, or Blue-water--c it, and in a few days entered the hills of the Fausse or Fore Washita, on the north side of that riveNhlgh, broken, md preciptous elevations, in which they were entangled for the space of two or three days. Where 1 afterward passed through these hills, they are devoid of tn1ber; but where Lewis went through on his outward trip, they were, generally, thiclSly covered with low shrub oaks and briers, forming, as 1t seen- ed. portion of the Cross Iimbers into which they entered as soon as they left the hills. Passing through the Cross Timbers --ia width, there, about fifteen mllesxtheY struck, for the first time, the Fausse Wash 1 ita.
 These Cross Timbers are a belt of tin- Der, extending from the Canadian, or lit tie further north, to an unkno VII distance south of Red River. The belt is in width from fifteen to fifty miles, composed ot black jack and post oak, with thick un- dergrowfh of small bilshy oak and brers, in places absolutely imperyions About this time Lewls lost his horse. which wan- 1 dered off one night, and was never found again. He was nov, like Andrews and 1 Chambers, on foot. Just beyond the Cross
 Tiinbers, Monro and his wife left him and returned to the white settlements, weary of the journey. Itwas we'll that they did so.*
 Fifty miles above the Cross Timbers,. upon the Nashita. and on the morning of 1 the twelfth of October, Lewis and his two companies parted !ro:a :tli;s Cher Cher ollStes. though with the utmost reluctance on the l part of the latter, who were urgent fer them to remain and trap with them. Thus far ] there had been to them, and there is to any man, but little danger. The pawnees are 1 sometimes, but very seldom, found below 1 the Cross fimbers-the gumanches never | Now, however, commenced the danger.-
 The heads of the Washia and the western part of the Canadian are the homes of the latter tribe. IL was not the nature, howev- CT, of either Lewis or Chambers to fear, and they, encumbered by Andrews, pushed boldly on up the river. The country was now changed. On each side of the river, l after leaving the bottom, there was a high, level, and dry prairie, where grass grows only to the height Of two or three inches. and, by the month of October, is scorched, curled, and grey, affordng little or no sus- tenance to any thing but the buffalo. No man can form an idea of the prairie, from any thing which he sees to the east of the Cross Timbers. Broad, level, gray, and barren, the immense desert which ex- tends thence westwardly almost to the shadow of the mountains, is too grand and too sublime to be imaged by the narrow, contracted, undulatating plains to be found nearer the bounds of civilization.
 Imagine yourself, kind reader. standing in plain to which your eye can see no bounds. Not tree, not bush, not shrub, not tail weed lifts it's head above the bar ren grandeur of the desert; not stone is to be seen on it's hard beaten surface; no undulation, no abruptness, no break to re- lieve the monotony; nothing, save here and there deep narrow track worn into l the hard plain by the constant hoof of the 1 buffalo. Imagine then countless herds of buffalo, showing their unwieldly, dark shapes m every direction, as far as the eye can reach, and approaching at times to within forty steps of you; or a herd of wild horses feeding in the distance or hur- rying away from the hateful smell of man, l with their names floating, and trampling like thunder. Imagine here and there d solitary antelope, or, perhaps. whole herd, l fleeting off in the distance, like the scatter ing of white clouds. Imagine bands of white, snow-lke wolves prowling about, accompanied by the little grey colotes or prairie wolves, who are as rapacious and