The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
Beyond Carondalet, the country has the appearance of a grown-up heath.
It is a bushy uninviting tract, without mature forest trees. The most
interesting feature we saw, consisted of a number of regular
depressions, or cup-shaped concavities in the soil, caused by the
passage of springs over a clay basis, upon which there is deposited a
heavy diluvial stratum of sand, mixed earth and pebbles. Within about
three miles of the city, this heathy and desolate tract began to assume
a cultivated character; dwellings and gardens soon succeeded, and we
found ourselves, by almost imperceptible grades, introduced into the
city, which we reached about four o'clock in the afternoon. On entering
its ancient Spanish barriers, we noticed one of the old stone towers, or
defences, which constituted a part of the enclosure. This town, I
afterwards learned, had been regularly walled and fortified, during the
possession of the country by the Spanish crown. As soon as I had taken
lodgings, I called on R. Pettibone Esq., a friend formerly of Vernon, in
western N.Y. who had established himself in this central city of the
west, in the practice of the law; he was not in, at the moment, but his
family received me with cordiality. He returned my visit in the evening,
and insisted on my taking up my quarters at his house. The time that I
spent here, was devoted to the most prominent objects which the town and
its vicinity presented to interest a stranger, such as the private
museum of the late Gen. Wm. Clark, containing many articles of rich and
valuable Indian costume; the large natural mounds above the city, and
the character of the rock formation along the shores of the river, which
was said to have had the impressions of human feet, on its original
surface. The latter I did not see till the summer of 1821, when the
block of stone containing them was examined in Mr. Rapp's garden, at
Harmony, on the Wabash.
My inclinations having led me, at this time, to visit the extensive lead
mines, southwest of this city, on the waters of the Merrimack, I lost no
time in retracing my way to Herculaneum, by descending the Mississippi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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