"The hills! our mountain-wall, the hills!"
_Alpine Omen._
"But thou, exulting and abounding river!
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow
Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever,
Could man but leave thy bright creation so--"
_Childe Harold._
There are few objects upon the Mississippi in which the geologist and
natural philosopher may claim a deeper interest than that singular
series of limestone cliffs already alluded to, which, above its
junction with the Ohio, present themselves to the traveller all along
the Missouri shore. The principal ridge commences a few miles above
Ste. Genevieve; and at sunrise one morning we found ourselves beneath
a huge battlement of crags, rising precipitously from the river to the
height of several hundred feet. Seldom have I gazed upon a scene more
eminently imposing than that of these hoary old cliffs, when the
midsummer-sun, rushing upward from the eastern horizon, bathed their
splintered pinnacles and spires and the rifted tree-tops in a flood of
golden effulgence. The scene was not unworthy Walter Scott's graphic
description of the view from the Trosachs of Loch Katrine, in the
"Lady of the Lake:"
"The _eastern_ waves of _rising_ day
Roll'd o'er the _stream_ their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
* * * * *
Their rocky summits, split and rent,
Form'd turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seem'd fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever decked
Or mosque of eastern architect."
{74} All of these precipices, not less than those on the Ohio, betray
palpable indication of having once been swept by the stream; and the
fantastic excavations and cavernous fissures which their bold
escarpments expose would indicate a current far more furious and
headstrong than that, resistless though it be, which now rolls at
their base. The idea receives confirmation from the circumstance that
opposite extends the broad American Bottom, whose alluvial character
is undisputed. This tract once constituted our western border, whence
the name.
The bluffs of Selma and Herculaneum are distinguished for their beauty
and grandeur, not less than for the practical utility to which they
have been made subservient. Both places are great depositories of lead
from the mines of the interior, and all along their cliffs, for miles,
upon every eligible point, are erected tall towers for the manufacture
of shot. Their appearance in distant view is singularly picturesque,
perched lightly upon the pinnacles of towering cliffs, beetling over
the flood, which rushes along two hundred feet below. Some of these
shot manufactories have been in operation {75} for nearly thirty
years.[66] Herculaneum has long been celebrated for those in her
vicinity. The situation of the town is the mouth of Joachim Creek; and
the singular gap at this point has been aptly compared to an enormous
door, thrown open in the cliffs for the passage of its waters. A few
miles west of this village is said to exist a great natural curiosity,
in shape of a huge rock of limestone, some hundred feet in length,
and about fifty feet high. This rock is completely honeycombed with
perforations, and has the appearance of having been pierced by the
mytilus or some other marine insect.
A few miles above Herculaneum comes in the Platine Creek;[67] and here
commence the "Cornice Rocks," a magnificent escarpment of castellated
cliffs some two or three hundred feet in perpendicular altitude from
the bed of the stream, and extending along the western bank a distance
of eight or ten miles. Through the façade of these bluffs pours in the
tribute of the Merrimac, a bright, sparkling, beautiful stream.[68]
This river is so clear and limpid that it was long supposed to glide
over sands of silver; but the idea has been abandoned, and given place
to the certainty of an abundant store of lead, and iron, and salt upon
its banks, while its source is shaded by extensive forests of the
white pine, a material in this section of country almost, if not
quite, as valuable.[69] Ancient works of various forms are also found
upon the banks of the Merrimac. There is an immense cemetery near the
village of Fenton, containing {76} thousands of graves of a pigmy
size, the largest not exceeding four feet in length. This cemetery is
now enclosed and cultivated, so that the graves are no longer visible;
but, previous to this, it is said that headstones were to be seen
bearing unintelligible hieroglyphical inscriptions.[70] Human remains,
ancient pottery, arrow-heads, and stone axes are daily thrown up by
the ploughshare, while the numerous mounds in the vicinity are
literally composed of the same materials. Mammoth bones, such as those
discovered on the Ohio and in the state of New-York, are said also to
have been found at a salt-lick near this stream.
It was a bright morning, on the fifth day of an exceedingly long
passage, that we found ourselves approaching St. Louis. At about noon
we were gliding beneath the broad ensign floating from the flagstaff
of Jefferson Barracks.[71] The sun was gloriously bright; the soft
summer wind was rippling the waters, and the clear cerulean of the
heavens was imaged in their depths. The site of the quadrangle of the
barracks enclosing the parade is the broad summit of a noble bluff,
swelling up from the water, while the outbuildings are scattered
picturesquely along the interval beneath; the view from the steamer
cannot but strike the traveller as one of much scenic beauty. Passing
the venerable village of Carondelet, with its whitewashed cottages
crumbling with years, and old Cahokia buried in the forests on the
opposite bank, the gray walls of the Arsenal next stood out before us
in the rear of its beautiful esplanade.[72] A fine quay is erected
upon the river in front, and the extensive grounds {77} are enclosed
by a wall of stone. Sweeping onward, the lofty spire and dusky walls
of St. Louis Cathedral, on rounding a river bend, opened upon the eye,
the gilded crucifix gleaming in the sunlight from its lofty summit;
and then the glittering cupolas and church domes, and the fresh aspect
of private residences, mingling with the bright foliage of
forest-trees interspersed, all swelling gently from the water's edge,
recalled vividly the beautiful "Mistress of the North," as my eye has
often lingered upon her from her magnificent bay. A few more spires,
and the illusion would be perfect. For beauty of outline in distant
view, St. Louis is deservedly famed. The extended range of limestone
warehouses circling the shore give to the city a grandeur of aspect,
as approached from the water, not often beheld; while the
dense-rolling forest-tops stretching away in the rear, the sharp
outline of the towers and roofs against the western sky, and the
funereal grove of steamboat-pipes lining the quay, altogether make up
a combination of features novel and picturesque. As we approached the
landing all the uproar and confusion of a steamboat port was before
us, and our own arrival added to the bustle.
And now, perchance, having escaped the manifold perils of sawyer and
snag, planter, wreck-heap, and sand-bar, it may not be unbecoming in
me, like an hundred other tourists, to gather up a votive offering,
and--if classic allusion be permissible on the waters of the
wilderness West--hang it up before the shrine of the "Father of
Floods."
{78} It is surely no misnomer that this giant stream has been styled
the "eternal river," the "terrible Mississippi;"[73] for we may find
none other imbodying so many elements of the fearful and the sublime.
In the wild rice-lakes of the far frozen north, amid a solitude broken
only by the shrill clang of the myriad water-fowls, is its home.
Gushing out from its fountains clear as the air-bell, it sparkles over
the white pebbly sand-beds, and, breaking over the beautiful falls of
the "Laughing Water,"[74] it takes up its majestic march to the
distant deep. Rolling onward through the shades of magnificent
forests, and hoary, castellated cliffs, and beautiful meadows, its
volume is swollen as it advances, until it receives to its bosom a
tributary, a rival, a conqueror, which has roamed three thousand miles
for the meeting, and its original features are lost for ever. Its
beauty is merged in sublimity! Pouring along in its deep bed the
heaped-up waters of streams which drain the broadest valley on the
globe; sweeping onward in a boiling mass, furious, turbid, always
dangerous; tearing away, from time to time, its deep banks, with their
giant colonnades of living verdure, and then, with the stern despotism
of a conqueror, flinging them aside again; governed by no principle
but its own lawless will, the dark majesty of its features summons up
an emotion of the sublime which defies contrast or parallel. And then,
when we think of its far, lonely course, journeying onward in proud,
dread, solitary grandeur, {79} through forests dusk with the lapse of
centuries, pouring out the ice and snows of arctic lands through every
temperature of clime, till at last it heaves free its mighty bosom
beneath the Line, we are forced to yield up ourselves in uncontrolled
admiration of its gloomy magnificence. And its dark, mysterious
history, too; those fearful scenes of which it has alone been the
witness; the venerable tombs of a race departed which shadow its
waters; the savage tribes that yet roam its forests; the germes of
civilization expanding upon its borders; and the deep solitudes,
untrodden by man, through which it rolls, all conspire to throng the
fancy. Ages on ages and cycles upon cycles have rolled away; wave
after wave has swept the broad fields of the Old World; an hundred
generations have arisen from the cradle and flourished in their
freshness, and, like autumn leaflets, have withered in the tomb; and
the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, the Cæsars and the Caliphs, have
thundered over the nations and passed away; and here, amid these
terrible solitudes, in the stern majesty of loneliness, and power, and
pride, have rolled onward these deep waters to their destiny!
"Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer!"
There is, perhaps, no stream which presents a greater variety of
feature than the Mississippi, or phenomena of deeper interest, whether
we regard the soil, productions, and climate of its valley, its
individual character and that of its tributaries, or {80} the outline
of its scenery and course. The confluents of this vast stream are
numerous, and each one brings a tribute of the soil through which it
has roamed. The Missouri pours out its waters heavily charged with the
marl of the Rocky Mountains, the saffron sands of the Yellow Stone,
and the chalk of the White River; the Ohio holds in its floods the
vegetable mould of the Alleghanies, and the Arkansas and Red Rivers
bring in the deep-died alluvion of their banks. Each tributary mingles
the spoils of its native hills with the general flood. And yet, after
the contributions of so many streams, the remarkable fact is observed
that its breadth and volume seem rather diminished than
increased.[75] Above the embouchure of the Missouri, fifteen hundred
miles from the Mexican gulf, it is broader than at New-Orleans, with
scarce one tenth of its waters; and at the foot of St. Anthony's Falls
its breadth is but one third less. This forms a striking
characteristic of the Western rivers, and owes, perhaps, its origin
partially to the turbid character of their waters: as they approach
their outlet they augment in volume, and depth, and impetuosity of
current, but contract their expanse. None, however, exhibit these
features so strikingly as the grand central stream; and while, for its
body of water, it is the narrowest stream known, it is charged with
heavier solutions and has broader alluvions than any other. The depth
of the stream is constantly varying. At New-Orleans it exceeds one
hundred feet. Its width is from half of one mile to two miles; the
breadth of its valley {81} from six miles to sixty; the rapidity of
its current from two miles to four; its mean descent six inches in a
mile, and its annual floods vary from twelve feet to sixty, commencing
in March and ending in May. Thus much for Statistics.
Below its confluence with its turbid tributary, the Mississippi, as
has been observed, is no longer the clear, pure, limpid stream,
gushing forth from the wreathy snows of the Northwest; but it whirls
along against its ragged banks a resistless volume of heavy, sweeping
floods, and its aspect of placid magnificence is beheld no more. The
turbid torrent heaves onward, wavering from side to side like a living
creature, as if to overleap its bounds; rolling along in a deep-cut
race-path, through a vast expanse of lowland meadow, from whose
exhaustless mould are reared aloft those enormous shafts shrouded in
the fresh emerald of their tasselled parasites, for which its alluvial
bottoms are so famous. And yet the valley of the "endless river"
cannot be deemed heavily timbered when contrasted with the forested
hills of the Ohio. The sycamore, the elm, the linden, the cotton-wood,
the cypress, and other trees of deciduous foliage, may attain a
greater diameter, but the huge trunks are more sparse and more
isolated in recurrence.
But one of the most striking phenomena of the Mississippi, in common
with all the Western rivers, and one which distinguishes them from
those which disembogue their waters into the Atlantic, is the
uniformity of its meanderings. The river, in its onward course, makes
a semicircular sweep almost {82} with the precision of a compass, and
then is precipitated diagonally athwart its channel to a curve of
equal regularity upon the opposite shore. The deepest channel and most
rapid current is said to exist in the bend; and thus the stream
generally infringes upon the _bend-side_, and throws up a sandbar on
the shore opposite. So constantly do these sinuosities recur, that
there are said to be but three _reaches_ of any extent between the
confluence of the Ohio and the Gulf, and so uniform that the boatmen
and Indians have been accustomed to estimate their progress by the
number of bends rather than by the number of miles. One of the sweeps
of the Missouri is said to include a distance of forty miles in its
curve, and a circuit of half that distance is not uncommon. Sometimes
a "_cut-off_," in the parlance of the watermen, is produced at these
bends, where the stream, in its headlong course, has burst through the
narrow neck of the peninsula, around which it once circled. At a point
called the "Grand Cut-off," steamers now pass through an isthmus of
less than one mile, where formerly was required a circuit of twenty.
The current, in its more furious stages, often tears up islands from
the bed of the river, removes sandbars and points, and sweeps off
whole acres of alluvion with their superincumbent forests. In the
season of flood the settlers, in their log-cabins along the banks, are
often startled from their sleep by the deep, sullen crash of a
"land-slip," as such removals are called.
The scenery of the Mississippi, below its confluence {83} with the
Missouri, is, as has been remarked, too sublime for beauty; and yet
there is not a little of the picturesque in the views which meet the
eye along the banks. Towns and settlements of greater or less extent
appear at frequent intervals; and then the lowly log-hut of the
pioneer is not to be passed without notice, standing beneath the tall,
branchless columns of the girdled forest-trees, with its luxuriant
maize-fields sweeping away in the rear. One of these humble
habitations of the wilderness we reached, I remember, one evening near
twilight; and while our boat was delayed at the woodyard, I strolled
up from the shore to the gateway, and entered easily into
confabulation with a pretty, slatternly-looking female, with a brood
of mushroom, flaxen-haired urchins at her apron-string, and an infant
at the breast very quietly receiving his supper. On inquiry I learned
that eighteen years had seen the good woman a denizen of the
wilderness; that all the responsibilities appertained unto herself,
and that her "man" was proprietor of some thousand acres of _bottom_
in the vicinity. Subsequently I was informed that the worthy
woodcutter could be valued at not less than one hundred thousand! yet,
_en verite_, reader mine, I do asseverate that my latent sympathies
were not slightly roused at the first introduction, because of the
seeming poverty of the dirty cabin and its dirtier mistress!
_St. Louis._