In 1837 these mountains were uninhabited. One road wound among the intricacies of the mountains between Fort Gibson and the village of Fayetteville. After leaving the Methodist Mission of Prospect Hill smoke was scarcely seen by the traveler until he had entered the limits of Arkansas. There were a few hunting and bridle-paths, leading in a direction parallel to the road, which were frequented exclusively by the smugglers engaged in the nefarious business of selling whiskey to the Indians. Since then a mighty change has taken place. On the removal of the Cherokee Indians west, the North Carolina band selected these hills as most like their old homes and established themselves among them. Hamlets grew up in the valleys and farms were opened; so that in a short time the intelligent Cherokee citizens, second to no agricultural class in the world, followed in their train, and large plantations were opened. One of these colonists, the well-known chief, Bushyhead, has a magnificent estate comprising a prairie and grove of about one thousand acres, which has none to surpass it in the country. A wooded knoll rises at the back of his house, to the heighth of about 250 feet, and on a calm summer-day the ripple of the Illinois may be heard in the distance through the forests and green corn-fields. The writer has often partaken of his hospitality, and has been a witness of the prosperity and happiness of his whole household, Indian and Negro, (he has many slaves.) This happiness would be without alloy but that the Indian always knows he is but a tenant at will of the soil he stands upon, and looks back, perhaps with regret, to the days when his forefathers wandered in savage independence on the shores of the Atlantic. On the other side of the Neosho River the mountains are higher and wilder, and even now desolate; and in the year 1840 I crossed that portion of the ridge on duty, and have a strange tale to tell of it. After a furlough of some years, I returned in 1840 to the west, and after reporting for duty to the headquarters of the department, was ordered to join a squadron of my regiment then stationed on the Red River. The navigation of the western rivers was then most uncertain, and I was ordered to cross the intermediate country by land instead of trusting to the tortuous navigation of the Arkansas, emphatically one of those streams of which John Randolph said, “they were dry in summer and choked up with ice during the winter.”