[3] ARKANSAS TERRITORY was formed in 1819, capital LITTLE ROCK, then a village built on a bluff near the beginning of the hilly region. The name comes from a rock in the river exposed at low water. FORT SMITH was a new military post. Other settlements were scattered along the Arkansas from the White River Cut-off to Belle Point, and on Red River as far as the Kiamesha. Though numerous, Long says all were small. Besides these, the CHEROKEES were also forming settlements on the Arkansas about Cadron, which Long often found superior, in respect of the comforts of life, to those of the whites. These people were the vanguard of their nation, to which Government had ceded lands in Arkansas Territory, and was removing from Georgia beyond the Mississippi. They owned black slaves, the same as the whites. They raised considerable cotton, which they wove into cloth for their own use. [4] DISAPPEARANCE OF THE RIVERS. Long's party travelled more than a hundred miles along the dry bed of the Arkansas without once seeing water. Of course they hastened on through this desert with all speed. MISSOURI, AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1821. Far back, when the original States were yet colonies, and while the people of Massachusetts were solemnly deliberating how to deliver themselves from oppression, a letter was read to the body to whom this grave question had been committed, asking it to consider the state of the negro slaves in the province. These men had just said they were called rebels because they would not be slaves. The dilemma was thus presented to them, either to make good their declaration, or limit its application to themselves. After some debate the matter was dropped, but the plea for a principle had been uttered, the appeal to men's consciences taken, and as some secret cause, working beneath the waters, gives notice of the agitation below by sending up bubbles to the surface, so this question of slavery continued at intervals to prick the conscience of the people, and confront them at every turn with its warning. The North had got rid of slavery. It had done more. Its voice had excluded slavery from the great North-West. But the South owed its growth to slave labor, and wherever her people went to found new States they carried their slaves with them. It was inevitable, that, whenever free and slave labor should meet on the same ground, a conflict must arise between them, though statesmen were anxious to avert the coming on of strife as long as possible.