The hills and mountains between the Arkansa and Missouri are equally prolific in watercourses. The most considerable of these are the Verdigrise, Neosho or Grand river, Illinois; together with the Frogs, Mulberry, White Oak, Spadra, Pine, Illinois, Point Remove and Cadron creeks, tributary to the Arkansa; the Little Red and White rivers, confluent streams; the Strawberry, Spring, Eleven Point, Currant, Little and Big Black, all confluent, and tributary to White river, which enters the Mississippi about thirty miles above the mouth of the Arkansa. The St. Francis and the Merameg have their sources in this broken region also, and discharge themselves into the Mississippi. Of the valleys of the rivers last enumerated, viz. those north of the Arkansa and tributary to the Mississippi, it is observable that they are uniformly possessed of a rich soil, but owing to the excessive floods occasionally brought down through them from {217} the hills and mountains, their cultivation is very precarious. The valley of White river, and those of some few others, are in many places elevated above the reach of the highest freshets, and are not altogether subject to this inconvenience. But for the most part they are liable to being swept by overwhelming freshets, which prostrate fences, buildings, and every artificial structure that opposes their march. Even a fall freshet has been known to inundate plantations situated within the valleys, to the depth of eight or ten feet. These floods are generally very sudden, as well as excessive, to such a degree, that on some occasions the water has risen, in the course of one night, more than twenty feet. By these sudden rises of the water, the planter that in the evening thought his family and possessions secure from harm, has been compelled the next morning to embark with his family in a canoe, to save themselves from impending destruction, while his habitation, fields, cattle, and all his effects, are abandoned to the fury of the torrent. The streams rising in the same hilly country, and tributary to the Missouri, are the following, viz. the Bon Homme creek, the Gasconade, the Osage and its tributaries, the Le Mine, the Blue Water, and several streams tributary to the Konzas river. Upon some of these, as the Bon Homme, Gasconade, and some few creeks besides, mills have been constructed, at which much of the timber of the St. Louis market is sawed.