which he reached a little above the old French establishment of Nachitoches.  Beyond this point, inland navigation had never been attempted, and Finn, procuring a light dug-out, started alone, with his arms and his blanket, upon his voyage of discovery.  During four months he struggled daily against the rapid stream, till he at last reached, in spite of rafts and dangerous eddies, its source at the Rocky Mountains.  On his return, a singular and terrible adventure befel him:  he was dragging his canoe over a raft, exactly opposite to where now stands his plantation, when, happening to hurt his foot, he lost hold of his canoe.  It was on the very edge of the raft, near a ruffled eddy:  the frail bark was swamped in a moment, and with it Finn lost his rifle, all his arms, and his blanket[27].

[Footnote 27:  Rafts are an assemblage of forest trees, which have been washed down to the river, from the undermining of its banks.  At certain points they become interlaced and stationary, stretching right across the river, prevailing the passage of even a canoe.]

Now that cotton grown on the Red River has been acknowledged to be the best in the States, speculators have settled upon both sides of it as far as two hundred miles above Lost Prairie; but at the time that Finn made his excursion, the country was a wilderness of horrible morasses, where the alligators basked unmolested.  For months Finn found himself a prisoner at Lost Prairie, the spot being surrounded with impenetrable swamps, where the lightest foot would have sunk many fathoms below the surface.  As to crossing the river, it was out of the question, as it was more than half a mile broad, and Finn was no swimmer:  even now, no human being or animal can cross it at this particular spot, for so powerful are the eddies, that, unless a pilot is well acquainted with the passage, a boat will be capsized in the whirlpools.  Human life can be sustained upon very little, for Finn managed to live for months upon a marshy ground six miles in extent, partially covered with prickly pears, sour grapes, and mushrooms.  Birds he would occasionally kill with sticks; several times he surprised tortoises coming on shore to deposit their eggs, and once, when much pressed by hunger, he gave battle to a huge alligator.  Fire he had none; his clothes had long been in rags; his beard had grown to a great length, and his nails were sharp as the claws of a wild beast.  At last there was a flood in the river, and above the raft Finn perceived two immense pine trees afloat in the middle of the stream.  Impelled by the force of the current, they cut through the raft, where the timber was rotten, and then grounded.

This was a chance which Finn lost no time in profiting by; out of the fibrous substance of the prickly pear, he soon manufactured sufficient rope to lash the two trees together, with great labour got them afloat, and was carried down the stream with the speed of an arrow.  He succeeded in landing many miles below, on the eastern bank, but he was so bruised, that for many days he was unable to move.