These portions of country are chequered with woodlands and prairies, in many instances alternating with each other in due proportion, for the accommodation of settlers with farming and woodlands. On the Missouri above Fort Osage, and on the Osage river, however, the proportion of woodland is very inconsiderable, and the timber it affords of a scrubby character. The prairies here, as on the north of the Missouri, occupy at least nineteen-twentieths of the whole surface. Some portions of the Red river country are also deficient in the quantum of woodlands allotted to them; but in general it may be observed, that the more southerly regions are better supplied with timber than those farther north. The growth of the woodlands interspersed amongst the prairies is mostly post oak, hickory, black jack, and white oak upon the high lands; and cotton-wood, sycamore, black and white walnut, maple, bur oak, and several other trees common to the western bottoms, in the valleys. The bow wood, or, as it is sometimes called, the Osage orange, is found upon the southerly tributaries of the Arkansa, and upon the Red river and its tributaries. This tree is deserving of particular notice, inasmuch as it affords a timber extremely compact and elastic; its trunk and roots may prove very useful in dying yellow, and its fruit of importance in medicine. The residue of this section, with the exception of the river bottoms, and tracts of valley land scattered in various directions throughout the whole, is extremely hilly, broken, and mountainous, the hills and mountains rising from five to fifteen hundred feet above the water-table of the country in which they are situated. They are exceedingly numerous, and are divided into a multiplicity of knobs and peaks, {216} having rounded summits, and presenting perpendicular cliffs and abrupt precipices of sandstone. Their surfaces generally are covered with rocks of this description, or flinty fragments strewed in profusion upon them. The growth upon them is, almost exclusively, pitch pine, cedar, scrubby oaks, hickory, haw and bramble; the poverty of the soil in some instances, and the scarcity of it in others, excluding the more luxuriant vegetable productions common to the more level country in their vicinity. The range of mountains situated between the Arkansa and Red rivers gives rise to the following streams, all of which are sufficiently copious for mill-seats, and abound in cascades and falls, well adapted to such purposes; viz. the Blue Water, Kiamesha and Little rivers; the Mountain, Rolling, Cossetot and Saline forks of Little river, all of which are tributary to Red river; the Little Missouri, Cadeau, Washita, and the Saline, all confluent; the Mamelle, Le Fevre, Petit Jean and Poteau, tributary to the Arkansa, besides numerous creeks of less note.