Part 3 (1/2)

”The _eastern_ waves of _rising_ day Roll'd o'er the _stream_ their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire

Their rocky summits, split and rent, Form'd turret, dome, or battlement, Or seem'd fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as paGod ever decked Or mosque of eastern architect”

{74} All of these precipices, not less than those on the Ohio, betray palpable indication of having once been swept by the stream; and the fantastic excavations and cavernous fissures which their bold escarpments expose would indicate a current far h it be, which now rolls at their base The idea receives confirmation from the circumstance that opposite extends the broad American Bottom, whose alluvial character is undisputed This tract once constituted our western border, whence the nauished for their beauty and grandeur, not less than for the practical utility to which they have been reat depositories of lead fro their cliffs, for ible point, are erected tall towers for the ularly picturesque, perched lightly upon the pinnacles of towering cliffs, beetling over the flood, which rushes along two hundred feet below Some of these shot manufactories have been in operation {75} for nearly thirty years[66] Herculaneu been celebrated for those in her vicinity The situation of the town is the ap at this point has been aptly compared to an enore of its waters A few reat natural curiosity, in shape of a huge rock of lih This rock is completely honeyco been pierced by the mytilus or some other marine insect

A few miles above Herculaneum comes in the Platine Creek;[67] and here conificent escarpment of castellated cliffs some two or three hundred feet in perpendicular altitude fro the western bank a distance of eight or ten h the facade of these bluffs pours in the tribute of the Merri, beautiful stream[68]

This river is so clear and lilide over sands of silver; but the idea has been abandoned, and given place to the certainty of an abundant store of lead, and iron, and salt upon its banks, while its source is shaded by extensive forests of the white pine, a material in this section of country almost, if not quite, as valuable[69] Ancient works of various forms are also found upon the banks of the Merrie of Fenton, containing {76} thousands of graves of a pigth This ceraves are no longer visible; but, previous to this, it is said that headstones were to be seen bearing unintelligible hieroglyphical inscriptions[70] Human remains, ancient pottery, arrow-heads, and stone axes are daily thrown up by the ploughshare, while the numerous mounds in the vicinity are literally composed of the same materials Mammoth bones, such as those discovered on the Ohio and in the state of New-York, are said also to have been found at a salt-lick near this strea, on the fifth day of an exceedingly long passage, that we found ourselves approaching St Louis At about noon ere gliding beneath the broad ensign floating froloriously bright; the soft su the waters, and the clear cerulean of the heavens was ile of the barracks enclosing the parade is the broad su up fros are scattered picturesquely along the interval beneath; the view from the steamer cannot but strike the traveller as one of e of Carondelet, with its ashed cottages cru with years, and old Cahokia buried in the forests on the opposite bank, the gray walls of the arsenal next stood out before us in the rear of its beautiful esplanade[72] A fine quay is erected upon the river in front, and the extensive grounds {77} are enclosed by a wall of stone Sweeping onward, the lofty spire and dusky walls of St Louis Cathedral, on rounding a river bend, opened upon the eye, the gilded crucifix glealittering cupolas and church do with the bright foliage of forest-trees interspersed, all swelling gently froe, recalled vividly the beautiful ”Mistress of the North,” as nificent bay A few more spires, and the illusion would be perfect For beauty of outline in distant view, St Louis is deservedly fa the shore give to the city a grandeur of aspect, as approached fro forest-tops stretching away in the rear, the sharp outline of the towers and roofs against the western sky, and the funereal grove of steaether make up a combination of features novel and picturesque As we approached the landing all the uproar and confusion of a steamboat port was before us, and our own arrival added to the bustle

And now, perchance, having escaped the , planter, wreck-heap, and sand-bar, itin ather up a votive offering, and--if classic allusion be per it up before the shrine of the ”Father of Floods”

{78} It is surely no iant stream has been styled the ”eternal river,” the ”terrible Mississippi;”[73] for weso many elements of the fearful and the sublime

In the wild rice-lakes of the far frozen north, a of theout from its fountains clear as the air-bell, it sparkles over the white pebbly sand-beds, and, breaking over the beautiful falls of the ”Laughing Water,”[74] it takes up its h the shades of nificent forests, and hoary, castellated cliffs, and beautiful meadows, its volume is swollen as it advances, until it receives to its bosom a tributary, a rival, a conqueror, which has roainal features are lost for ever Its beauty isin its deep bed the heaped-up waters of strea onward in a boilingaway, froiant colonnades of living verdure, and then, with the stern despotisoverned by no principle but its oless will, the dark majesty of its features summons up an emotion of the sublime which defies contrast or parallel And then, e think of its far, lonely course, journeying onward in proud, dread, solitary grandeur, {79} through forests dusk with the lapse of centuries, pouring out the ice and snows of arctic lands through every tehty bosom beneath the Line, we are forced to yield up ourselves in uncontrolled adnificence And its dark, mysterious history, too; those fearful scenes of which it has alone been the witness; the venerable toe tribes that yet roa upon its borders; and the deep solitudes, untrodden bythe fancy Ages on ages and cycles upon cycles have rolled aave after wave has swept the broad fields of the Old World; an hundred generations have arisen from the cradle and flourished in their freshness, and, like autumn leaflets, have withered in the tomb; and the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, the Caesars and the Caliphs, have thundered over the nations and passed away; and here, amid these terrible solitudes, in the stern majesty of loneliness, and power, and pride, have rolled onward these deep waters to their destiny!

”Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy?

God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer!”

There is, perhaps, no streareater variety of feature than the Mississippi, or phenoard the soil, productions, and climate of its valley, its individual character and that of its tributaries, or {80} the outline of its scenery and course The confluents of this vast streas a tribute of the soil through which it has roaed with the marl of the Rocky Mountains, the saffron sands of the Yellow Stone, and the chalk of the White River; the Ohio holds in its floods the vegetable hanies, and the Arkansas and Red Rivers bring in the deep-died alluvion of their banks Each tributary eneral flood And yet, after the contributions of so many streams, the remarkable fact is observed that its breadth and volume seem rather diminished than increased[75] Above the embouchure of the Missouri, fifteen hundred ulf, it is broader than at New-Orleans, with scarce one tenth of its waters; and at the foot of St Anthony's Falls its breadth is but one third less This for characteristic of the Western rivers, and owes, perhaps, its origin partially to the turbid character of their waters: as they approach their outlet they augment in volume, and depth, and impetuosity of current, but contract their expanse None, however, exhibit these features so strikingly as the grand central stream; and while, for its body of water, it is the narrowest streaed with heavier solutions and has broader alluvions than any other The depth of the strea At New-Orleans it exceeds one hundred feet Its width is from half of one mile to two miles; the breadth of its valley {81} from six miles to sixty; the rapidity of its current from two miles to four; its mean descent six inches in a mile, and its annual floods vary fro in May Thus much for Statistics

Below its confluence with its turbid tributary, the Mississippi, as has been observed, is no longer the clear, pure, li forth froainst its ragged banks a resistless volunificence is beheld nofro creature, as if to overleap its bounds; rolling along in a deep-cut race-path, through a vast expanse of lowland meadow, from whose exhaustless mould are reared aloft those enormous shafts shrouded in the fresh emerald of their tasselled parasites, for which its alluvial bottoms are so famous And yet the valley of the ”endless river”

cannot be deemed heavily timbered when contrasted with the forested hills of the Ohio The sycamore, the elm, the linden, the cotton-wood, the cypress, and other trees of deciduous foliage, e trunks are more sparse and more isolated in recurrence

But one of thephenomena of the Mississippi, in couishes theue their waters into the Atlantic, is the unifors The river, in its onward course, makes a semicircular sweep almost {82} with the precision of a coonally athwart its channel to a curve of equal regularity upon the opposite shore The deepest channel and most rapid current is said to exist in the bend; and thus the streaes upon the _bend-side_, and throws up a sandbar on the shore opposite So constantly do these sinuosities recur, that there are said to be but three _reaches_ of any extent between the confluence of the Ohio and the Gulf, and so uniform that the boatress by the number of bends rather than by the number of miles One of the sweeps of the Missouri is said to include a distance of forty miles in its curve, and a circuit of half that distance is not uncommon Sometimes a ”_cut-off_,” in the parlance of the watermen, is produced at these bends, where the streah the narrow neck of the peninsula, around which it once circled At a point called the ”Grand Cut-off,” steah an isthmus of less than one mile, where formerly was required a circuit of twenty

The current, in its es, often tears up islands from the bed of the river, removes sandbars and points, and sweeps off whole acres of alluvion with their superincumbent forests In the season of flood the settlers, in their log-cabins along the banks, are often startled from their sleep by the deep, sullen crash of a ”land-slip,” as such removals are called

The scenery of the Mississippi, below its confluence {83} with the Missouri, is, as has been remarked, too sublime for beauty; and yet there is not a little of the picturesque in the viehich reater or less extent appear at frequent intervals; and then the lowly log-hut of the pioneer is not to be passed without notice, standing beneath the tall, branchless coluirdled forest-trees, with its luxuriantaway in the rear One of these humble habitations of the wilderness we reached, I reht; and while our boat was delayed at the woodyard, I strolled up froateway, and entered easily into confabulation with a pretty, slatternly-looking female, with a brood of , and an infant at the breast very quietly receiving his supper On inquiry I learned that eighteen years had seen the good woman a denizen of the wilderness; that all the responsibilities appertained unto herself, and that her ”man” was proprietor of some thousand acres of _bottom_ in the vicinity Subsequently I was informed that the worthy woodcutter could be valued at not less than one hundred thousand! yet, _en verite_, reader mine, I do asseverate that htly roused at the first introduction, because of the see poverty of the dirty cabin and its dirtier mistress!

_St Louis_

VIII

”Once more upon the waters, yet once more!”

_Childe Harold_

”I believe this is the finest confluence in the world”

CHARLEVOIX

”'Tis twilight now; The sovereign sun behind his western hills In glory hath declined”

BLACKWOOD'S _Magazine_