May 5, 1819. We were swept round by the strong current of the Mississippi in our keel-boat between two green islands covered with rushes and cotton-waters of White River. This is all a region of deep and universal inundation. There was from six to ten feet water over all the bottoms; and we had a wide display of that spectacle so common in the spring on the Mississippi, - a dense forest of the largest trees, vocal with the song of birds, matted with every species of tangled vegetation, and harbouring in great numbers the turkey-buzzard, and some species of eagles; and all this vegetation apparently rising from the bosom of dark and discoloured waters... It is late in the season before the floods recede; and fever, musquitoes, alligators, serpents, bears, and now and then parties of hunting Indians, are the only tenants of these woods.

Timothy Flint

Recollection of the Last Years... Timothy Flint (1819). Found in A Garden in the Wilderness: The Johnsons and the Making of Lakeport Plantation, 1831-1876. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Arkansas. Fayetteville, Arkansas Tom DeBlack (1995) p. 36.