and the
Arkansas Rivers, begin on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Meramec
River, 20 miles below St. Louis, and extend along the Mississippi,
rising frequently into cliffs of limestone 350 feet high, to Gape
Girardeau, 44 miles above Cairo, Ill.

This range, less than 100 miles wide, one of the richest in the world in
minerals, sinks away on the north and west to the valleys of the Osage
and the Missouri and the prairies which stretch across Kansas and the
Indian Territory to the Rocky Mountains. To the southeast it falls into
the lowlands and swamps along the Mississippi, making there a separate
and distinct section--about the size of Connecticut--and of entirely
different character from the rest of the State. Over 3,000 square miles
of this--or nearly three times the size of Rhode Island--are swamps
thickly wooded with towering cypresses, and covered with jungles
impenetrable to man. The principal town In the region was New Madrid, a
fever-smitten little village on the banks of the Mississippi, 44 miles
below Cairo. It had once much promise, but the terrible earthquakes
of 1811-12 had seamed the surrounding country with great crevices and
gulches, adding hopelessly to its forbidding character, and giving a
mortal blow to New Madrid's expectations.

The region was drained--as far as it was drained--by the St. Francis
River, a considerable stream, navigable nearly to the Missouri line, and
emptying into the Mississippi nine miles above Helena, Ark.

Besides the Mississippi River there were then two routes of access from
St. Louis to this region. One was by the Iron Mountain Railroad, which
ran through the Ozarks to Pilot Knob, 84 miles from the city, and the
other by common road through Fredericktown, 105 miles from St. Louis.

243

Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston--regarded by Jefferson Davis as a great
military genius, and appointed to command the entire Confederate army
in the West--had some idea of moving an army up through the swamps to
these roads, flanking the Union position at Cairo and taking St. Louis.
The St. Francis River would aid in supplying the army. His immediate
subordinate, Maj. Gen. Polk, was still more in favor of the plan, and it
went in this proportion down through Gen. Gideon Pillow, with his "Army
of Liberation," to the most enthusiastic advocate, of the scheme,
our poetical acquaintance, Gen. M. Jeff Thompson, file "Swamp Fox of
Missouri." The idea was to move in concert with Price coming