While at Little Rock we visited all the State institutions, and among them that for the blind. After ten days of business success, we went to all the towns on the Arkansas River, and were charmed with its scenery, for while the classical meander, it winds in graceful beauty through forests which, although too low and ragged to please the eye, clothe a country otherwise picturesque in character. A strange peculiarity of the Arkansas River is that of the emerald green color which deeply tinges its crystal clearness, a fact which I found no one able to explain satisfactorily.
Fort Smith is nominally at the head of river navigation, but is really accessible by steamer only during a very small portion of the year, when the water is at an unusually high stage. It is beautifully located, and has a main street known as "The Avenue," which is between two and three hundred feet in width. This avenue is a great business centre, and at almost all times a scene of animated interest, while at its head stand prominently a cathedral and a convent.
The swift passing panorama of the avenue is ofttimes varied by a picturesque group of Chocktaws or Cherokees, with grotesque costume, this place being their principal rendezvous. Just at the edge of the town is a National Cemetery of great natural beauty, with but little of the stiff regularity which usually characterizes such places.
We found a great lack of educational advantages throughout the entire State of Arkansas, there being no public schools, and the private ones few in number and poor in character; but it has never been my good fortune to meet kinder hearts than were encountered among the masses.
At Arkadelphia we had a regular Arkansas deluge, and the first class hotel of this flourishing town of two thousand souls would indeed have been a poor ark for Father Noah and his family. Its walls were lathed but not plastered, and from our apartment we had an extended view of the entire floor.
Our furniture consisted of two wooden chairs, a box turned upside down for a toilet-stand, a rickety bedstead, with unmusical creak, a tumble-down lounge, and dismal, but genuine tallow dip. In these quarters we spent four days, during which time the rain poured with unremitting constancy.