The bed of White river, at the place where we crossed it, is paved with pebbles and fragments of a yellowish white petrosiliceous stone, intermixed with rounded masses of transparent quartz, and sometimes with pieces of calcedony. Its water is uncommonly transparent, and this, with the whiteness of its bed, and the brisk motion of the current, gives it an aspect of unusual beauty. The banks are high, and in many places not exposed to inundation. Dense and heavy forests of sycamore and cotton-wood stretch along the river, disclosing here and there, at distant intervals, the solitary hut and the circumscribed _clearing_ of the recent settler. Some who have been no more than two or three years resident upon their present farms, and who commenced in the unbroken forests, have now abundant crops of corn and pumpkins, with large fields of cotton, which is said to equal in quality that of the uplands of Georgia and Carolina. Few attempts have hitherto been made to cultivate any grain, except Indian corn, though the soil is thought to be in many places well adapted to wheat, barley, oats, &c. The maize cultivated in the Arkansa territory, and in the southern and western states, generally is the variety called the ground seed, having a long and compressed kernel, shrivelled at the end when fully ripe; and crops are not uncommon yielding from sixty to ninety bushels per acre. In all the uplands, the prevailing growth is oak. At the time of our journey, the acorns were falling in such quantities, that the ground for an extent of many acres was often seen almost covered with them. Many recent settlers, indulging the disposition to indolence which seizes upon almost every man who {140} fixes his residence in these remote forests, place as much dependence upon the crop of mast as on the products of their own industry. Vast numbers of swine are suffered to range at large in the forests, and in the fall of the year, when they have become fat by feeding on the acorns, they are hunted and killed like wild animals, affording to the inhabitants a very important article of subsistence. It is remarked also, that the venison becomes fat somewhat in proportion as acorns are abundant. Turkeys, which are still vastly numerous in the settlements of White river, feed upon them, but are said to grow poor in consequence. Sweet potatoes[24] are produced in great perfection in many parts of the Arkansa territory, and are but too much cultivated and eaten, their constant use as an article of food being little beneficial to health. The common or _Irish potatoe_, as it is here universally called, succeeds but indifferently, and few attempts are made to cultivate it.