Saturday, August 19th. The mercury at sunrise stood at 71°. The morning was calm, and the sky tinged with that intense and beautiful blue which marks many of our summer skies, and is seen with greater pleasure by those who know that home or a good tavern is near, than by such as have no prospect of shelter save what a tent or a blanket can afford. We were now looking with much impatience for something to indicate an approach towards the village of the Pawnee Piqua, but instead of this the traces of Indians seemed to become less and less frequent. Notwithstanding the astonishing numbers of bison, deer, antelopes, and other animals, the country is less strewed with bones than almost any we have seen; affording an evidence that it is not a favourite hunting ground of any tribe of Indians. The animals also appear wholly unaccustomed to the sight of men. The bisons and wolves move slowly off to the right and left, leaving a lane for the party to pass, but those on the windward side often linger for a long time, almost within the reach of our rifles, regarding us with little appearance of alarm. We had now nothing to suffer either from the apprehension { 322} or reality of hunger, and could have been content that the distance between ourselves and the settlements should have been much greater than we supposed it to be.
In the afternoon, finding the course of the river again bending towards the north, and becoming more and more circuitous, we turned off on the right hand side, and choosing an east course, travelled across the hills, not doubting but we should soon arrive again at the river. We found the country at a distance from the bed of the river, somewhat elevated and broken, but upon climbing some of the highest hills, we again saw the landscape of the unbounded and unvaried grassy plain spread out before us. All the inequalities of the surface have evidently been produced by the excavating operation of currents of water, and they are consequently most considerable near the channels of the large streams. This remark is applicable to the vallies of all the large rivers in the central portions of the great horizontal formation west of the Alleghanies. We find accordingly, that on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Platte, the Konzas, and many of the rivers tributary to the Mississippi, the surface becomes broken in proportion as we proceed from the interior towards the bed of the river, and all the hills bear convincing evidence that they have received their existence and their form from the action of the currents of water which have removed the soil and other matters formerly occupying the vallies and elevating the whole surface of the country nearly to a common level. Regarding in this view the extensive vallies of the Mississippi and its tributaries, we naturally inquire how great a length of time must have been spent in the production of such an effect, the cause operating as it now does. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that where tributaries of the rivers in question are bounded on both sides, as they often are, by perpendicular cliffs of sandstone or limestone { 323} in horizontal strata, the seams and markings on one side correspond with those on the other, indicating the stratifications to have been originally continuous.