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 no one more so than my kind Kentucky host, who had been the last to bid me adieu on the verge of the wilderness.
CHAPTER IV.
Sit down to write an account of the mines--Medical properties of the Mississippi water--Expedition to the Yellow Stone--Resolve to visit Washington with a plan of managing the mines--Descend the river from St. Genevieve to New Orleans--Incidents of the trip--Take passage in a ship for New York--Reception with my collection there--Publish my memoir on the mines, and proceed with it to Washington--Result of my plan-- Appointed geologist and mineralogist on an expedition to the sources of the Mississippi.
1819. I now sat down to draw up a description of the mine country and its various mineral resources. Having finished my expedition to the south, I felt a strong desire to extend my observations up the Mississippi to St. Anthony's Falls, and into the copper-bearing regions of that latitude. Immediately I wrote to the Hon. J.B. Thomas, of Illinois, the only gentleman I knew at Washington, on the subject, giving him a brief description of my expedition into the Ozarks. I did not know that another movement, in a far distant region, was then on foot for exploring the same latitudes, with which it was my fortune eventually to be connected. I allude to the expedition from Detroit in 1820, under General Cass.
I had, at this time, personally visited every mine or digging of consequence in the Missouri country, and had traced its geological relations into Arkansas. I was engaged on this paper assiduously. When it was finished, I read it to persons well acquainted with the region, and sought opportunities of personal criticism upon it.
The months of February and March had now glided away. Too close a confinement to my room, however, affected my health. The great change of life from camping out, and the rough scenes of the forest, could not fail to disturb the functional secretions. An obstruction of the liver developed itself in a decided case of jaundice. After the usual remedies, I made a journey from Potosi to the Mississippi River, for the purpose of ascending that stream on a barge, in order