and ague.  He agreed, however, to go, and reached the point of rendezvous, at Potosi; but he had been so enfeebled as to be obliged to return from that point.  The brother of Pettibone arrived.  He had no tastes for natural history, but it was a season of leisure, and he was prone for the adventure.  But the experienced woodsmen who had agreed to go, and who had talked largely of encountering bears and Osage Indians, and slaughtering buffalo, one by one gave out.  I was resolved myself to proceed, whoever might flinch.  I had purchased a horse, constructed a pack saddle with my own hands, and made every preparation that was deemed necessary.  On the 6th of November I set out.  Mr. Ficklin, my good host, accompanied me to the outskirts of the settlement.  He was an old woodsman, and gave me proper directions about hobbling my horse at night, and imparted other precautions necessary to secure a man’s life against wild animals and savages.  My St. Louis auxiliary stood stoutly by me.  If he had not much poetry in his composition, he was a reliable man in all weathers, and might be counted upon to do his part willingly.

This journey had, on reflection, much daring and adventure.  It constitutes my initial point of travels; but, as I have described it from my journal, in a separate form, it will not be necessary here to do more than say that it was successfully accomplished.  After spending the fall of 1818, and the winter of 1819, in a series of adventures in barren, wild, and mountainous scenes, we came out on the tributary waters of the Arkansas, down which we descended in a log canoe.  On the Strawberry River, my ankle, which I had injured by leaping from a wall of rock while hunting in the Green Mountains four years before, inflamed, and caused me to lie by a few days; which was the only injury I received in the route.

I returned to Potosi in February.  The first man I met (Major Hawking), on reaching the outer settlements, expressed surprise at seeing me, as he had heard from the hunters, who had been on my trail about eighty miles to the Saltpetre caves on the Currents River, that I had been killed by the Indians.  Every one was pleased to see me, and no one more so than my kind Kentucky host, who had been the last to bid me adieu on the verge of the wilderness.

CHAPTER IV.

Sit down to write an account of the mines—­Medical properties of the Mississippi water—­Expedition to the Yellow Stone—­Resolve to visit Washington with a plan of managing the mines—­Descend the river from St. Genevieve to New Orleans—­Incidents of the trip—­Take passage in a ship for New York—­Reception with my collection there—­Publish my memoir on the mines, and proceed with it to Washington—­Result of my plan—­ Appointed geologist and mineralogist on an expedition to the sources of the Mississippi.