south-west of New-York. In another quarter, there are the Yankee notions of Ohio. From Kentucky, pork, flour, whiskey, hemp, tobacco, bagging and bale rope. From Tennessee, there are the same articles, together with great quantities of cotton. From Missouri and Illinois, cattle and horses, the same articles, generally, as from Ohio, together with peltry and lead from Missouri. Some boats are loaded with corn in the ear and in bulk; others with barrels of apples and potatoes. Some have loads of cider, and what they call "cider royal," or cider that has been strengthened by boiling or freezing. There are dried fruits, every kind of spirits manufactured in these regions, and, in short, the products of the ingenuity, and agriculture of the whole upper country of the west. They have come from regions thousands of miles apart. They have floated to a common point of union. The surfaces of the boats cover some acres. Dunghill fowls are fluttering over the roofs as an invariable appendage. The chanticleer raises his piercing note. The swine utter their cries. The cattle low. The horses trample as in their stables. There are boats fitted on purpose, and loaded entirely with turkeys, that having little else to do, gobble most furiously. The hands travel about from boat to boat, make inquiries and acquaintances, and form alliances to yield mutual assistance to each other on their descent to New-Orleans. After an hour or two passed in this way, they spring on shore to raise the wind in town. It is well for the people of the village if they do not become riotous in the course of the evening; in which case I have often seen the most summary and strong measures taken. About midnight the uproar is all hushed. The fleet unites once more at Natchez or New-Orleans, and although they live on the same river, they may, perhaps, never meet each other again on this earth. Next morning, at the first dawn, the bugles sound. Every thing in and about the boats that has life, is in motion. The boats, in half an hour, are all under way. In a little while they have all disappeared, and nothing is seen, as before they came, but the regular current of the river." p. 104.

St. Louis, like all other French towns, with its white-washed, mud walls, looked beautiful at a distance, and mean when you approached. It had, however, many very handsome buildings, and the country about it was open, undulating and interspersed with flourishing farms. Some old Spanish stone forts in the vicinity had a picturesque appearance; and the gradual elevation of the town, rising from the shore to the top of the bluff, added much to its beauty. Such was it when our traveller first saw it but it was in a progressive stage of improvement. The old French quietism, which hated change, had been invaded by American activity. Lines of buildings, containing spacious and handsome city-houses, arose. Steam mills, ox mills and others, were erected in the vicinity, and the town rapidly changing its ancient, foreign physiognomy, has already assumed one more modern, and more familiar to our eyes. This is the central point of the great valley of the Mississippi, from which outfits

are dispatched to the distant military posts, the hunting stations and the lead-mine districts of the upper part of the river. Our limits, however, prevent our saying more on this place.

Our traveller having here divided his missionary labours with an associate, it was deemed expedient that he should fix himself at St. Charles, on the Missouri, eighteen miles north-west of St. Louis. He proceeded there by land, but his family were sent on in their boat; and, on the 10th of September, they first saw the mouth of the mighty Missouri, the largest tributary stream in the known world, for it flows between three and four thousand miles before it is lost in the Mississippi. Its stream is deep, rapid, and of a turbid, clayey white. Its navigation is more difficult than that of the Mississippi, for the violence of its current is so great as often to remove islands and sweep large tracts of ground from one spot to bank them on another. The boat experienced great difficulty and hazard in ascending. They found the water near Belle Fontaine, an "almost continued ripple pouring furiously against the numerous sawyers, which gave the river the appearance of a field of dead trees." They arrived on the 5th day at St. Charles, a distance, by the course of the river, of forty miles.

Between the Missouri and the Upper Mississippi, there is an extensive prairie of a rich, black soil, capable of producing seventy bushels of corn to the acre. It lies at the foot of the Mamelles, which are a succession of beautiful, cone-shaped hills, and is skirted by a noble wood; it extends in length seventy miles. It presents a perfect sea of verdure, perfumed with flowers of every hue and fragrance. The surface is so smooth, that houses, eight miles off, seem to repose at your feet. Large herds are seen grazing together at intervals, and flocks of various birds, enliven the joyous scene. The farms are laid off in parallelograms, and produce abundance of every thing:—

"When I first saw this charming scene, here, said I, to my companion who guided me, here shall be my farm, and here I will end my days! In effect, take it all in all, I have not seen, before nor since, a landscape which united, in an equal degree, the grand, the beautiful and fertile.It is not necessary, in seeing it, to be very young or very romantic, in order to have dreams steal over the mind, of spending an Arcadian life in these remote plains, which just begin to be vexed with the plough, far removed from the haunts of wealth and fashion, in the midst of rustic plenty, and of this beautiful nature." p. 123.

On a part of this Arcadia, he cultivated a small farm, and resided there, at different periods, for nearly five years. The fame of the beautiful prairie drew visiters even from Virginia

and the Carolinas, whose imaginations were warmed with the appearance of a country so beautiful, and yet so unlike, what they were accustomed to. "Longer and more practical acquaintance with this Land of Promise, remarks our traveller, has taught these amiable and opulent people, that evils of all sorts can exist in the most beautiful countries, and that physical advantages are but a poor compensation for the loss of moral ones. From his residence in St. Charles, he made different excursions on professional business. At one time, he visited the Mine district; at another, he went up the river Illinois, and saw something of several tribes of Indians. In August, among the swamps of the Illinois, he imbibed the Malaria, and on his return home, was attacked with a bilious fever. This was in the third year of his residence in the west. His illness was long and severe, and on his recovery, having received an invitation to the State of Mississippi, and being determined to try a more southern climate, and being perhaps influenced, without being aware of it, by the same love of change which governed all around him, in the spring of 1819, he removed from his paradise at St. Charles', where he had often thought to finish his course, and hoped his ashes would rest, and once more embarked on the Mississippi for the territory of Arkansas. He had now passed out of the upper, and, comparatively, healthy country, and taken up his abode in one that was sickly. One summer there rendered every member of his family ill but himself. They became disheartened, and, yielding to their wishes, in the fall he carried them up the Mississippi to New Madrid.

This is the southern boundary of the State of Missouri. It embraces a fine, rich alluvial district, and the country on all sides, except the Great Prairie, is covered with noble forests.General Morgan, of New-Jersey, formerly attempted to found a colony here, and form a great city under the Spanish government. He induced many respectable families to join him, whose adventures partake of the nature of romance. They, ultimately, were involved in ruin, though a few still survive to recount their miserable fate. The settlement of the district has been impeded by its sickly character, and the awful visitations of earthquakes in 1812. Our traveller's account of these, collected on the spot, is exceedingly interesting. We can only give a brief abstract of it. Whole tracts of land were swallowed up by the river. The grave-yard and its sleepless tenants at New-Madrid, were washed away. Most of the houses were thrown down.— Lakes of twenty miles, in extent, were made in an hour, and others drained. For three hundred miles along the river, the whole country was convulsed. Trees were split in the centre,

and violently interlashed. The undulations of the ground were like the waves of the sea, increasing in elevation as they advanced, and when about as high as the tallest tree, bursting open and disgorging volumes of water, sand and coal. Many of these chasms remain to this day. The shocks were attended with explosions, subterranean thunder, and a terrible mixture of noises. The perpendicular shocks crumbled the houses, waved the trees, and rent open the earth. The horizontal shocks were less destructive.

"One result from these terrific phenomena was very obvious. The people of this village had been noted for their profligacy and impiety. In the midst of these scenes of terror, all, Catholics and Protestants, praying and profane, became of one religion, and partook of one feeling. Two hundred people, speaking English, French and Spanish, crowded together, their visages pale, the mothers embracing their children as soon as the omen that preceded the earthquakes became visible, as soon as the air became a little obscured, as though a sudden mist arose from the east,-all in their different languages and forms, but all deeply in earnest, betook themselves to the voice of prayer. The cattle as much terrified as the rational creation, crowded about the assemblage of men, and seemed to demand protection, or community of danger. One lady ran as far as her strength would permit, and then fell exhausted and fainting, from which, she never recovered. The general impulse, when the shocks commenced, was to run; and yet, when they were at the severest point of their motion, the people were thrown on the ground at almost every step.- -The people at the Little Prairie, who suffered most, had their settlement, which consisted of one hundred families, and which was located in a wide, and very deep and fertile bottom, broken up. These people, without an exception, were unlettered backwoodsmen of the class least addicted to reasoning, and yet it is remarkable how ingeniously and conclusively they reasoned from apprehension, sharpened by fear. They remarked that the chasms in the earth were in direction from south-west to north-east, and they were of an extent to swallow up not only men but houses, "down quick into the pit." And these chasms occurred frequently within intervals of half a mile. They felled the tallest trees at right angles to the chasms, and stationed themselves upon the felled trees. By this invention, all were saved; for the chasms occurred more than once under these felled trees. Meantime their cattle and their harvest miserably perished.— The people no longer dared to dwell in houses, but passed this winter and the succeeding one in bark booths and camps, like those of the Indians," &c. pp. 224-226.

The Little Prairie settlement was thus entirely broken up, and that of the Great Prairie diminished. New Madrid sunk into insignificance, and though it is slowly recovering, and houses are re-building, yet it is with such frail materials as are adapted

to the fears of the inmates, and will not expose them to danger in case of being thrown down.

At Cape Girardeau, near New Madrid, our Missionary sojourned, and preached more than a year. He found the people extremely rough, ignorant, bigoted and immoral. His time passed devoid of interest, comfort or utility; yet, he met with an exception in one isolated and pure German settlement, where the people preserved their nationality and language unmixed. They were simple, hospitable and kind, but ignorant, and too much addicted to whiskey. Their peculiarities are pleasingly described, and, on contemplating their homely virtues, we cannot avoid wishing, notwithstanding their faults, that such communities were oftener to be met with in the western world.

His voyage to, and residence in Arkansas, are worthy of no tice. After floating down the Mississippi, between three and four hundred miles, his boat was swept round by the current between two green islands, covered with rushes and cotton-wood trees, into a small bay which receives the waters of White river, so called by the Indians, from its pellucid waters. They proceeded for some distance against the current, when they perceive ed an opening, into which they were borne by a counter current, through a deep and inundated forest, till they arrived at another opening at right angles with the river. It was the Arkansas, moving on with a majestic stream of waters of the colour of arnotto dye. This voyage was replete with dangers and disasters that we have no room to narrate: suffice it to say, they arrived safely at their destination.

The Arkansas, towards its source, is a broad and deep river, but when, in its course, it reaches the sandy plains, it sinks and almost disappears. For one hundred miles from the mountains where it emerges into the plain, it becomes fordable in the summer; lower down, it loses itself in the desert, merely trickling amidst banks of sand and pebbles, exhibiting often a dry channel of burning sand from bank to bank. It is upon these sands that the far-famed fields of rich, native grapes, of a conical form, and transparent blue, mentioned by Major Long, as so delicious and abundant, are produced. The islands of verdure which appear among these sandy deserts, are clothed with the tenderest grapes, and, of course, abound in animals. The elk, buffalo and wild horse roam in immense herds, and the salt licks or ponds which abound, seem, says our author, a “kind provision for the support of the numberless animals that feed on these plains."

The Post of Arkansas is a town or a level tract of land, haying a slight elevation above the adjacent bottom. For some VOL. II. NO. 3.

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