It was now the 27th of July, and the river, which had been swollen by the Missouri flood, was rapidly falling, and almost diminished to its summer minimum. It left a heavy deposit of mud on its immediate shores, which, as it dried in the sun, cracked into fragments, which were often a foot thick. These cakes of dried sediment consisted chiefly of sand and sufficient aluminous matter to render the whole body of the deposit adhesive.
I was kindly received by R. Pettibone, Esq., a townsman from New York, from whom I had parted at Pittsburgh. This gentleman had established himself in business with Col. Eastman, and as soon as he heard of my arrival, invited me to his house, where I remained until I was ready to proceed to the mines. I examined whatever seemed worth notice in the town and its environs. I then descended the Mississippi in a skiff about thirty miles to Herculaneum, and the next day set out, on foot, at an early hour, for the mines. I had an idea that every effective labor should be commenced right, and, as I purposed examining the mineralogy and geology of the mine tract, I did not think that could be more thoroughly accomplished than on foot. I ordered my baggage to follow me by the earliest returning lead teams. True it was sultry, and much of the first part of the way, I was informed, was very thinly settled. I went the first day, sixteen miles, and reached the head of Joachim Creek. In this distance, I did not, after quitting the environs of the town, pass a house. The country lay in its primitive state. For the purpose of obtaining a good road, an elevated arid ridge had been pursued much of the way. In crossing this, I suffered severely from heat and thirst, and the only place where I saw water was in a rut, which I frightened a wild turkey from partaking of, in order to stoop down to it myself. As soon as I reached the farm house, where I stopped at an early hour, I went down to the creek, and bathed in its refreshing current. This, with a night's repose, perfectly restored me. The next day I crossed Grand River, and went to the vicinity of Old mines, when a sudden storm compelled me to take shelter at the first house, where I passed my second night. In this distance I visited the mining station of John Smith T. at his place of Shibboleth. Smith was a bold and indomitable man, originally from Tennessee, who possessed a marked individuality of character, and being a great shot with pistol and rifle, had put the country in dread of him.
After crossing Big or Grand River, I was fairly within the mine country, and new objects began to attract my attention on every hand. The third day, at an early hour, I reached Potosi, and took up my residence at Mr. W. Ficklin's, a most worthy and estimable Kentuckian, who had a fund of adventurous lore of forest life to tell, having, in early life, been a spy and a hunter "on the dark and bloody ground." With him I was soon at home, and to him I owe much of my early knowledge of wood-craft. The day after my arrival was the general election of the (then) Territory of Missouri, and the district elected Mr. Stephen F. Austin to the local legislature. I was introduced to him, and also to the leading gentlemen of the county, on the day of the election, which brought them together. Mr. Austin, the elder, also arrived. This gathering was a propitious circumstance for my explorations; no mineralogist had ever visited the country. Coming from the quarter I did, and with the object I had, there was a general interest excited on the subject, and each one appeared to feel a desire to show me attentions.
Mr. Stephen F. Austin invited me to take rooms at the old Austin mansion; he requested me to make one of them a depot for my mineralogical collections, and he rode out with me to examine several mines.
He was a gentleman of an acute and cultivated mind, and great suavity of manners. He appreciated the object of my visit, and saw at once the advantages that might result from the publication of a work on the subject. For Missouri, like the other portions of the Mississippi Valley, had come out of the Late War with exhaustion. The effects of a peace were to lower her staples, lead, and furs, and she also severely felt the reaction of the paper money system, which had created extensive derangement and depression. He possessed a cautious, penetrating mind, and was a man of elevated views. He had looked deeply into the problem of western settlement, and the progress of American arts, education, and modes of thinking and action over the whole western world, and was then meditating a movement on the Red River of Arkansas, and eventually Texas. He foresaw the extension in the Mississippi Valley of the American system of civilization, to the modification and exclusion of the old Spanish and French elements.
Mr. Austin accompanied me in several of my explorations. On one of these excursions, while stopping at a planter's who owned a mill, I saw several large masses of sienite, lying on the ground; and on inquiry where this material could come from, in the midst of a limestone country, was informed that it was brought from the waters of the St. Francis, to serve the purpose of millstones. This furnished the hint for a visit to that stream, which resulted in the discovery of the primitive tract, embracing the sources of the St. Francis and Big Rivers.
I found rising of forty principal mines scattered over a district of some twenty miles, running parallel to, and about thirty miles west of, the banks of the Mississippi. I spent about three months in these examinations, and as auxiliary means thereto, built a chemical furnace, for assays, in Mr. Austin's old smelting-house, and collected specimens of the various minerals of the country. Some of my excursions were made on foot, some on horseback, and some in a single wagon. I unwittingly killed a horse in these trips, in swimming a river, when the animal was over-heated; at least he was found dead next morning in the stable.
In the month of October I resolved to push my examinations west beyond the line of settlement, and to extend them into the Ozark Mountains. By this term is meant a wide range of hill country running from the head of the Merrimack southerly through Missouri and Arkansas. In this enterprise several persons agreed to unite. I went to St. Louis, and interested a brother of my friend Pettibone in the plan. I found my old fellow-voyager, Brigham, on the American bottom in Illinois, where he had cultivated some large fields of corn, and where he had contracted fever and ague. He agreed, however, to go, and reached the point of rendezvous, at Potosi; but he had been so enfeebled as to be obliged to return from that point. The brother of Pettibone arrived. He had no tastes for natural history, but it was a season of leisure, and he was prone for the adventure. But the experienced woodsmen who had agreed to go, and who had talked largely of encountering bears and Osage Indians, and slaughtering buffalo, one by one gave out. I was resolved myself to proceed, whoever might flinch. I had purchased a horse, constructed a pack saddle with my own hands, and made every preparation that was deemed necessary. On the 6th of November I set out. Mr. Ficklin, my good host, accompanied me to the outskirts of the settlement. He was an old woodsman, and gave me proper directions about hobbling my horse at night, and imparted other precautions necessary to secure a man's life against wild animals and savages. My St. Louis auxiliary stood stoutly by me. If he had not much poetry in his composition, he was a reliable man in all weathers, and might be counted upon to do his part willingly.
This journey had, on reflection, much daring and adventure. It constitutes my initial point of travels; but, as I have described it from my journal, in a separate form, it will not be necessary here to do more than say that it was successfully accomplished. After spending the fall of 1818, and the winter of 1819, in a series of adventures in barren, wild, and mountainous scenes, we came out on the tributary waters of the Arkansas, down which we descended in a log canoe. On the Strawberry River, my ankle, which I had injured by leaping from a wall of rock while hunting in the Green Mountains four years before, inflamed, and caused me to lie by a few days; which was the only injury I received in the route.
I returned to Potosi in February. The first man I met (Major Hawking), on reaching the outer settlements, expressed surprise at seeing me, as he had heard from the hunters, who had been on my trail about eighty miles to the Saltpetre caves on the Currents River, that I had been killed by the Indians. Every one was pleased to see me, and