m to enjoy themselves thoroughly.

I can give you little idea of this portion of the Mississippi. The river
is very low, and does not seem large enough to be the outlet of the
thousand streams above; for the waters on which we float come not only
from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains, but there are mingled
with them the bright springs of Western New York, a large part of
Pennsylvania, part of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and a large
portion of the Western States. Yet, with all the waters of this vast
area, our boat can sometimes scarcely keep the channel. Last night,
running at her full speed, she went crashing into a snag, with a
concussion and scraping which woke us all up, and made the timid ones
spring out of their berths. Our safety was in our going down-stream
instead of up,--the difference of rubbing the back of a hedgehog the
right and the wrong way. These snags are great trees which cave off and
are washed down the current; the roots become embedded in the bottom;
and the stem and branches, pointing down-stream, and half or wholly
covered with water, form a terrible _steamboat de frise_, which tears an
ascending steamboat to pieces, but generally allows those going with the
current to pass over or through them with safety.

The river is full of islands, so that you often see but a small portion
of its waters; it winds along in so many convolutions that you must
steam a hundred miles often to make twenty in a straight line. Many
of these bends may be avoided at high water by taking the cross cuts,
called "running a _chute_" when the whole country for twenty miles on
each side is submerged.

Usually, on one side or the other, there is a perpendicular bank of
clay and loam some thirty feet high, and here and there are small
plantations. The river gradually wears them off, carrying down whole
acres in a season. From this bank the land descends back to the swamps
which skirt nearly the whole length of the river. These in very low
water are comparatively dry, but as the river rises they fill up, and
the whole country is like a great lake, filled with a dense growth
of timber. These curving banks, the rude and solitary huts of the
wood-cutters, the vast bars of sand, covered gradually with cane-brake,
and the range of impenetrable forest for hundreds of miles, comprise a
vast gloomy landscape, which must be seen to be realized....

While the scene is fresh in my memory let me describe to you my last