dress, it would seem to be impossible that any people, should have remained so long in contact with or juxtaposition to the European races and changed so little, in all that constitutes national and personal identity. Roberts looked with no very friendly eye upon these ancient lords of the forest, the whole sum of his philosophy and philanthropy being measured by the very tangible circle of prairie and forests, which narrowed his own hunting grounds. They were even then, deemed to have been injudiciously located, by intelligent persons in the west, and have long since removed to a permanent location, out of the corporate limits of the States and Territories, at the junction of the river Konga with the Missouri. I should have been pleased to have lengthened our short halt, but the word seemed with him and Enobitti to be "onward," and onward we pushed. We were now fairly in the Ozark chain--a wide and almost illimitable tract, of which it may be said, that the vallies only are susceptible of future cultivation. The intervening ridges and mountains are nearly destitute of forest, often perfectly so, and in almost all cases, sterile, and unfit for the plough. It is probable sheep might be raised on some of these eminences, which possess a sufficiency of soil to permit the grasses to be sown. Geologically, it has a basis of limestones, resting on sandstones. Unfortunately for its agricultural character, the surface has been covered with a foreign diluvium of red clay filled with chips of hornstone, chert and broken quartz, which make the soil hard and compact. Its trees are few and stunted; its grass coarse. In looking for the origin of such a soil, it seems probable to have resulted from broken down slates and shists on the upper Missouri and below the range of the Rocky Mountains, in which these broken and imbedded substances originally constituted veins. It is only in the vallies, and occasional plains, that a richer and more carbonaceous soil has accumulated. The purest springs, however, gush out of its hills; its atmosphere is fine and healthful, and it constitutes a theatre of Alpine attractions, which will probably render it, in future years, the resort of shepherds, lovers of mountain scenery, and valetudinarians. There is another remark to be made of the highland tracts of the Ozark range. They look, in their natural state, more sterile than they actually are, from the effects of autumnal fires. These fires, continued for ages by the natives, to clear the ground for hunting, have had the effect not only to curtail and destroy large vegetation, but all the carbonaceous particles of the top soil have been burned, leaving the surface in the autumn, rough, red, dry and hard. When a plough comes to be put into such a surface, it throws up quite a different soil; and the effects of light, and the sun's heat are often found, as I have noticed in other parts of the west, to produce a dark and comparatively rich soil.