oe and going downstream.

Such were the scenes that beset Mr. Hunt, and gave him a foretaste of
the difficulties of his command. The little cabarets and sutlers' shops
along the bay resounded with the scraping of fiddles, with snatches of
old French songs, with Indian whoops and yells, while every plumed and
feathered vagabond had his troop of loving cousins and comrades at his
heels. It was with the utmost difficulty they could be extricated from
the clutches of the publicans and the embraces of their pot companions,
who followed them to the water's edge with many a hug, a kiss on each
cheek, and a maudlin benediction in Canadian French.

It was about the 12th of August that they left Mackinaw, and pursued the
usual route by Green Bay, Fox and Wisconsin rivers, to Prairie du Chien,
and thence down the Mississippi to St. Louis, where they landed on the
3d of September.

CHAPTER XIV.

St. Louis.--Its Situation.--Motley Population.--French
Creole Traders and Their Dependants.--Missouri Fur Company--
Mr. Manuel Lisa.--Mississippi Boatmen.--Vagrant Indians.
--Kentucky Hunters--Old French Mansion--Fiddling--Billiards
--Mr. Joseph Miller--His Character--Recruits--Voyage Up the
Missouri.--Difficulties of the River.--Merits of Canadian
Voyageurs.-Arrival at the Nodowa.--Mr. Robert M'Lellan joins
the Party--John Day, a Virginia Hunter. Description of Him.
--Mr. Hunt Returns to St. Louis.

ST. LOUIS, which is situated on the right bank of the Mississippi
River, a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri, was, at that time, a
frontier settlement, and the last fitting-out place for the Indian trade
of the Southwest. It possessed a motley population, composed of the
creole descendants of the original French colonists; the keen traders
from the Atlantic States; the backwoodsmen of Kentucky and Tennessee;
the Indians and half-breeds of the prairies; together with a singular
aquatic race that had grown up from the navigation of the rivers--the
"boatmen of the Mississippi"--who possessed habits, manners, and almost
a language, peculiarly their own, and strongly technical. They, at that
time, were extremely numerous, and conducted the chief navigation and
commerce of the Ohio and the Mississippi, as the voyageurs did of the
Canadian waters; but, like them, their consequence and characteristics
are rapidly vanishing before the all-pervading intrusion of steamboats.

The old French