It was a vast plain, covered with woods and canebrakes, through which the wild herds had beaten out broad trails.

The only open places were the licks, sometimes as large as corn-fields, where the hoofs of the game had trodden the ground bare of vegetation, and channelled its surface with winding seams and gullies.
It is even doubtful if the spot of bare ground which Mansker called an "old field" or sometimes a "Chickasaw old field" was not merely one of these licks.

Buffalo, deer, and bear abounded; elk, wolves, and panthers were plentiful.
Yet there were many signs that in long by-gone times a numerous population had dwelt in the land.

Round every spring were many graves, built in a peculiar way, and covered eight or ten inches deep by mould.
In some places there were earth-covered foundations of ancient walls and embankments that enclosed spaces of eight or ten acres.

The Indians knew as little as the whites about these long-vanished mound-builders, and were utterly ignorant of the race to which they had belonged.