continued their ponderous masses of rock entirely across to the opposite bank."

The same writer made a visit to Brown's Falls, which he thinks beautiful and well worthy the inspection of the lovers of nature. He says:

"At the suggestion of the driver, we quitted the carriage to behold this seemingly insignificant stream precipitate its waters over a bed of rock, a distance of something more than forty feet, upon the rough and jagged masses of stone forming a time-worn basin for the noisy cascade. Leaving its banks, we explored the neighborhood, and found that our Jehu certainly evinced taste in recommending the spot, for in all my wanderings I have seen nothing more delightfully attractive than the scenery and associations embraced within the scope of a single glance. High above our heads the noisy volume of water leaped on to the verge of the cataract, and then, pausing but a brief while, sent its sparkling shower tremblingly, yet evenly over the barrier, whence it came madly down upon the fractured rocks at our feet. The spray caused by the strong and powerful concussion imparted a cooling influence to the shaded dell, while to the eye it appeared an iris lighting up the almost gloomy shade.

"It was a spot for dreams of Arcadia, and it required no stretch of imagination to believe that here some Dian of the surrounding wilds may have oft retired to escape the arid breath of the sun-scorched prairies, or perchance the buskined son of the soil led the maiden of his tribe to pour into her ear the story of his love. Fit spot for love or solitude! one might well forget that beyond there was a world of barrier- of six per cents, and notes of hand."

It certainly appears strange that the Mississippi, after absorbing the Ohio, presents no visible augmentation of its volume. Below the point of junction, the river is not broader than the Ohio alone. Though flowing in the same channel, the streams are not mingled. For many miles there is a distinct line of demarkation between the waters of the two rivers. Those of the Ohio are clear, while the stream of the Mississippi is ever dark and turbid. When the Mississippi is in flood, it almost up dams the Ohio, and suffers it to occupy but a small portion of the common channel.

After quitting La Belle Riviere, as the French first designated the Ohio, one feels as if he has made an exchange for the worse. The scenery of the Mississippi is even less varied than that of the Ohio. It is almost uniformly flat, though in the course of twelve hundred miles, a few bluffs and eminences do certainly occur. The wood grows down to the very margin of the river; and the timber, for some hundred miles, is by no means remarkable for size. As the river descends to the southward, however, it is of finer growth; and about latitude 30°, vegetation becomes marked by a degree of rankness and luxuriance which I have never seen anywhere else.

The American forests are generally remarkable for the entire absence of underwood, so that they are easily penetrable by a foot-traveler, and generally, even by a mounted one. But, in the neighborhood of the Mississippi, there is, almost uniformly, a thick undegrowth of cane, varying

in height from four or five to about twenty feet, according to the rich ness of the soil. Through this thicket of cane, we should think it quite impossible to penetrate; yet, the Indians do so for leagues together, though by what means they contrive to guide their course, where vision is manifestly impossible, is not easy to understand.

It has been the fashion with travelers to talk of the scenery of th Mississippi as wanting grandeur and beauty. Most certainly, it has neither. But there is no scenery on earth more striking. The dreary and pestilential solitude, untrodden, save by the foot of the Indian; the absence of all living objects, save the huge alligators, which float past apparently asleep, on the drift-wood; and an occasional vulture, attracted by its impure prey on the surface of the waters; the trees with a long and hideous drapery of pendant moss, fluttering in the wind; and the giant river, rolling onward the vast volume of its dark and turbid waters through the wilderness, form the features of one of the most dismal and impressive landscapes on which the eye of man ever rested. Rocks and mountains would add nothing of sublimity to the Mississippi. Pelion might be piled on Ossa; Alps on Andes; and still to the heart and perceptions of the spectator, the Mississippi would be alone. It can brook no rival, and it finds none. No river in the world drains so large a portion of the earth's surface. It is the traveler of five thousand miles, more than two-thirds of the diameter of the globe. The imagination asks, whence come its waters, and whither tend they? They come from the distant regions of a vast continent, where the foot of civilized man has seldom yet been planted. They flow into an ocean yet vaster, the whole body of which acknowledges their influence. Through what varieties of climate have they passed? On what scenes of lonely and sublime magnificence have they gazed? In short, when the traveler has asked and answered these questions, and a thousand others, it will be time enough to consider how far the scenery of the Mississippi would be improved by the presence of rock and mountains. He may then be

led to doubt whether any great effect can be produced by a combination of objects of a discordant character, however grand in themselves. The imagination is, perhaps, susceptible but of a single powerful impression at a time. Sublimity is uniformily connected with unity of object. Beauty may be produced by the happy adaptation of a multitude of harmonious details; but the highest sublimity of effect can proceed bui from one glorious and paramount object, which impresses its own character on every thing around.

"The prevailing character of the Mississippi," says a traveler, "is that of solemn gloom. I have trodden the passes of Alp and Appenine, yet never felt how awful a thing is nature, till I was borne on its waters, through regions desclate and uninhabitable. Day after day and night after night, we continued driving right downward to the south; our ves sel, like some huge demon of the wilderness, bearing fire in her bosom, and canopying the eternal forest with the smoke of her nostrils. How looked the hoary river-god, I know not; nor what thought the alligators when awakened from their slumber by a vision so astounding. But the effect on my own spirits was such as I have never experienced before or

since. Conversation became odious, and I passed my time in a sort of dreamy contemplation. At night, I ascended to the highest deck, and lay for hours gazing listlessly on the sky, the forests and the waters, amid silence only broken by the clanging of the engine.

"The navigation of the Mississippi is not unaccompanied by danger, rising from what are called planters and sawyers. These are trecs firmly fixed in the bottom of the river, by which vessels are in danger of being impaled. The distinction is, that the former stand upright in the water, the latter lie with their points directed down the stream.

"The bends or flexures of the Mississippi are regular in a degree unknown in any other river. The action of running water, in a vast alluvial plain like that of the basin of the Mississippi, without obstruction a from rock or mountain, may be calculated with the utmost precision Whenever the course of a river diverges in any degree from a right line, it is evident that the current can no longer act with equal force on both its banks. On one side the impulse is diminished, on the other increased. The tendency in these sinuosities, therefore, is manifestly to increase, and the stream which hollows out a portion of one bank, being rejected to the other, the process of curvature is still continued, till its channel presents an almost unvarying succession of salient and retiring angles.

"In the Mississippi, the flexures are so extremely great that it often happens that the isthmus which divides different portions of the river gives way. A few months before my visit to the south, a remarkable case of this kind had happened, by which forty miles of navigation had been saved. The opening thus formed, was called the new cut. Even the annual changes which take place in the bed of the Mississippi are very remarkable. Islands spring up and disappear; shoals suddenly present themselves, where pilots have been accustomed to deep water; in many places, whole acres are swept away from one bank, and added to the other; and the pilot assured me that in every voyage, he could perceive fresh changes.

"Many circumstances contribute to render these changes more rapid in the Mississippi, than in any other river. Among these, perhaps, the greatest is the vast volume of its waters, acting on alluvial matter peculiarly penetrable. The river, when in flood, spreads over the neighboring country, in which it has formed channels, called bayous. The banks thus become so saturated with water, that they can oppose little resistance to the action of the current, which frequently sweeps off large portions of the forest.

"The immense quantity of drift-wood is another cause of change. Floating logs encounter some obstacle in the river, and become stationary. The mass gradually accumulates; the water, saturated with mud deposits a sediment, and thus an island is formed, which soon becomes covered with vegetation. Some years ago, the Mississippi was surveyed by order of the government; and its islands from the confluence of the Missouri to the sea, were numbered. I remember asking the pilot the name of a very beautiful island, and the answer was, five-hundred-andseventy-three, the number assigned to it in the hydrographical srvey and the only name by which it was known.

"One of the most striking circumstances connected with this rivervoyage, was the rapid change of climate. Barely ten days had elapsed since I was traversing mountains almost impassable from snow. Even the level country was partially covered with it, and the approach of spring had not been heralded by any symptoms of vegetation. Yet, in little more than a week, I found myself in the region of the sugar

canes.

"The process of this transition was remarkable. During the first two days of the voyage, nothing like a blossom or a green leaf was to be seen. On the third, slight signs of vegetation were visible on a few of the hardier trees. These gradually became more general as we approached the Mississippi; but then, though our course lay almost due south, little change was apparent for a day or two. But after passing Memphis, in latitude 35°, all nature became alive. The trees which grew on any little eminence, or which did not spring immediately from the swamp, were covered with foliage; and at our wooding times, when I rambled through the woods, there were a thousand shrubs already bursting into flower. On reaching the lower regions of the Mississippi, all was brightness and verdure. Summer had already begun, and the heat was even disagreeably intense.

"Shortly after entering Louisiana, the whole wildness of the Misissippi disappears. The banks are all cultivated, and nothing was to be seen but plantations of sugar, cotton, and rice, with the houses of their owners, and the litte adjoining hamlets inhabited by the slaves. Here and there were orchards of orange-trees, but these occurred too seldom to have much influence on the landscape."

We extract from Audoban a description of the Virginia squatter upon the banks of the lower Mississippi:

"The individuals who become squatters, choose that sort of life of their own free will. They mostly remove from other parts of the United States, after finding that land has become too high in price; and they are persons who, having a family of strong and hardy children, are anxious to enable them to provide for themselves. They have heard from good authorities that the country extending along the great streams of the West, is, of all parts of the Union, the richest, in its soil, the growth of its timber, and the abundance of its game; that, besides, the Mississippi is the great road to and from all the markets in the world; and that every vessel borne by its waters afford to settlers some chance of selling their commodities, or of ex changing them for others. To these recommendations is added another, of even greater weight with persons of the above denomination, namely, the prospect of being able to settle on land, and perhaps to hold it for a namber of years, without purchase, rent, or tax of any kind. How many thousands of individuals in all parts of the globe would gladly try their fortune with such prospects, I leave to you, reader, to determine.

"As I am not disposed too highly to color the picture which I am about to submit to your inspection, instead of pitching on individuals who have removed from our eastern boundaries, and of whom certainly there are a good number, I shall introduce to you the members of a family from Virginia, first giving you an idea of their condition in that coun

try, previous to their migration to the West. The land which they and their ancestors have possessed for a hundred years, having been constantly forced to produce crops of one kind or other, is now completely worn out. It exhibits only a superficial layer of red clay, cut up by deep ra vines, through which much of the soil has been conveyed to some more fortunate neighbor, residing in a yet rich and beautiful valley. The strenuous efforts to render it productive have failed. They dispose of everything too cumbrous or expensive for them to remove, retaining only a few horses, a servant or two, and such implements of husbandry and other articles as may be necessary on their journey, or useful when they arrive at the spot of their choice.

"I think I see them at this moment harnessing their horses, and attaching them to their wagons, which are already filled with bedding, provisions, and the younger children; while on their outsides are fastened spinning-wheels and looms; and a bucket, filled with tar and tallow, swings between the hind wheels. Several axes are secured to the bolster, and the feeding trough of the horses contains pots, kettles and pans. The servant, now become a driver, rides the near saddled horse, the wife is mounted upon another, the worthy husband shoulders his gun, and his sons, clad in plain substantial homespun, drive the cattle ahead, and lead the procession, followed by the hounds and other dogs. Their day's journey is short and not agreeable:-the cattle, stubborn or wild, frequently leave the road for the woods, giving the travelers much trouble; the harness of the horses here and there gives away, and needs immediate repair; a basket, which has accidentally dropped, must be gone after, for nothing that they have can be spared; the roads are bad, and now and then all hands are called to push on the wagon, or prevent it from upsetting. Yet, by sunset, they have proceeded perhaps twenty miles. Ra ther fatigued, all assemble round the fire which has been lighted, supper is prepared, and a camp being erected, there they pass the night.

"Days and weeks, nay, months, of unremitting toil pass, before they gain the end of their journey. They have crossed both the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. They have been traveling from the beginning of May to that of September, and with heavy hearts they traverse the state of Mississippi. But now, arrived on the banks of the broad stream, they gaze in amazement on the dark deep woods around them. Boats of various kinds they see gliding downward with the current, while others slowly ascend against it. A few inquiries are made at the nearest dwelling, and assisted by the inhabitants with their boats and canoes, they at once cross the Mississippi, and select their place of habitation.

"The exhalations arising from the swamps and morasses around them, have a powerful effect on these new settlers, but all are intent upon preparing for the winter. A small patch of ground is cleared by the axe and the fire, a temporary cabin is erected, to each of the cattle is attached a jingling-bell before it is let loose into the neighboring canebrake, and the horses remain about the house, where they find sufficient food at that season. The first trading-boat that stops at their landing, enables them to provide themselves with some flour, fish-hooks, and ammunition, as well as other commodities The looms are mounted, the spinning-wheels sooD