suburbs--homes of beer-gardens and excursion barges, havens for
freight-flats, and villas of low and high degree.

When we are out here in the swim, the drift-strewn stream has a more
peaceful aspect than when looked at from the shore. Instead of rushing
past as if dooming to destruction everything else afloat, the debris
falls behind, when we row, for our progress is then the greater.
Dropping our oars, our gruesome companions on the river pass us
slowly, for they catch less wind than we; and then, so silent the
steady march of all, we seem to be drifting up-stream, until on
glancing at the shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down and
the willow fringes up,--until the sight makes us dizzy, and we are
content to be at quits with these optical delusions.

We no longer have the beach of gravel or sand, or strip of clay
knee-deep in mud. The water, now twelve feet higher than before
the rise, has covered all; it is, indeed, swaying the branches of
sycamores and willows, and meeting the edges of the corn-fields of
venturesome farmers who have cultivated far down, taking the risk of
a "June fresh." Often could we, if we wished, row quite within the
bulwark of willows, where a week ago we would have ventured to camp.

The Kentucky side, to-day, from Covington out, has been thoroughly
rustic, seldom broken by settlement; while Ohio has given us a
succession of suburban towns all the way out to North Bend (482
miles), which is a small manufacturing place, lying on a narrow bottom
at the base of a convolution of gentle, wooded hills. One sees that
Cincinnati has a better and a broader base; North Bend was handicapped
by nature, in its early race.

When Ohio came into the Union (1803), it was specified that the
boundary between her and Indiana should be a line running due north
from the mouth of the Big Miami. But the latter, an erratic stream,
frequently the victim of floods, comes wriggling down to the Ohio
through a broad bottom grown thick to willows, and in times of high
water its mouth is a changeable locality. The boundary monument is
planted on the meridian of what was the mouth, ninety-odd years ago;
but to-day the Miami breaks through an opening in the quivering line
of willow forest, a hundred yards eastward (487 miles).

Garrison Creek is a modest Kentucky affluent, just above the Miami's
mouth. At the point, a group of rustics sat on a log at the bank-top,
watching us approach. Landing in search of milk a