Should He Adopt This Advice, It Would Be
Better For Him To Abandon The River At The Arickara Town, At
Which He Would Arrive In The Course Of A Few Days.
As the Indians
at that town possessed horses in abundance, he might purchase a
sufficient number of them for his great journey overland, which
would commence at that place.
After reflecting on this advice, and consulting with his
associates, Mr. Hunt came to the determination to follow the
route thus pointed out, to which the hunters engaged to pilot
him.
The party continued their voyage with delightful May weather. The
prairies bordering on the river were gayly painted with
innumerable flowers, exhibiting the motley confusion of colors of
a Turkey carpet. The beautiful islands, also, on which they
occasionally halted, presented the appearance of mingled grove
and garden. The trees were often covered with clambering
grapevines in blossom, which perfumed the air. Between the
stately masses of the groves were grassy lawns and glades,
studded with flowers, or interspersed with rose-bushes in full
bloom. These islands were often the resort of the buffalo, the
elk, and the antelope, who had made innumerable paths among the
trees and thickets, which had the effect of the mazy walks and
alleys of parks and shrubberies. Sometimes, where the river
passed between high banks and bluffs, the roads made by the tramp
of buffaloes for many ages along the face of the heights, looked
like so many well-travelled highways. At other places the banks
were banded with great veins of iron ore, laid bare by the
abrasion of the river.
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