The day of the fishing at length arrived; our party of ladies and
gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours
before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted
before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on
the shores of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes. Fifty
negroes were already on the spot, some cutting wood for fuel, some
preparing breakfast, while others made ready the baits and lines, or
cleaned empty barrels, in which our intended victims were to be salted.
We scarcely had had time to look around us, when, from twenty different
quarters, we beheld the approach of as many parties, who had been
invited to share the sport. We greeted them planter fashion;--"Are you
hungry, eh, eh?--Sam, Napoleon, Washington, Caesar--quick--the
breakfast."
For several days previous, all the creeks of the neighbourhood had been
drained of their cray-fish, minnows, and shell-fish. All the dug-outs
and canoes from every stream thirty miles round had also been dragged to
the lake, and it was very amusing to see a fleet of eighty boats and
canoes of every variety, in which we were about to embark to prosecute
our intentions against the unsuspecting inhabitants of the water.
After a hearty, though somewhat hasty meal, we proceeded to business,
every white man taking with him a negro, to bait his line and unhook the
fish; the paddles were soon put in motion, and the canoes, keeping a
distance of fifty yards from each other, having now reached the deepest
part of the lake, bets were made as to who would pull up the first fish,
the ladies on shore watching the sport, and the caldrons upon the fire
ready to receive the first victims. I must not omit to mention, that
two of the larger canoes, manned only by negroes, were ordered to pull
up and down the line of fishing-boats and canoes, to take out the fish
as they were captured.
At a signal given by the ladies, the lines were thrown into the lake,
and, almost at the same moment, a deafening hurrah of a hundred voices
announced that all the baits had been taken before reaching the bottom,
every fisherman imagining that he had won his bet. The winner, however,
could never be ascertained, and nobody gave it a second thought, all
being now too much excited with the sport. The variety of the fish was
equal to the rapidity with which they were taken: basses, perch,
sun-fish, buffaloes, trouts, and twenty other sorts. In less than half
an hour my canoe was full to sinking; and I should certainly have sunk
with my cargo, had it not been most opportunely taken out by one of the
spare boats. All was high glee on shore and on the lake, and the scene
was now and then still diversified by comic accidents, causing the more
mirth, as there was no possibility of danger.
The canoe next to me was full to the gunwale, which was not two inches
above water: it contained the English traveller and a negro, who was
quite an original in his way. As fish succeeded to fish, their position
became exceedingly ludicrous: the canoe was positively sinking, and they
were lustily calling for assistance. The spare boat approached rapidly,
and had neared them to within five yards, when the Englishman's line was
suddenly jerked by a very heavy fish, and so unexpectedly, that the
sportsman lost his equilibrium and fell upon the larboard side of the
canoe.
The negro, wishing to restore the equilibrium, threw his weight on the
opposite side; unluckily, this had been the simultaneous idea of his
white companion, who also rolled over the fish to starboard. The canoe
turned the turtle with them, and away went minnows, crawfish, lines,
men, and all. Everybody laughed most outrageously, as the occupants of
the canoe re-appeared upon the surface of the water, and made straight
for the shore not daring to trust to another canoe after their ducking.
The others continued fishing till about half-past nine, when the rays of
the sun were becoming so powerful as to compel us to seek shelter in the
tents.
If the scene on the lake had been exciting, it became not less so on
shore, when all the negroes, male and female, crowding together, began
to scale, strip, and salt the fish. Each of them had an account to give
of some grand fishery, where a monstrous fish, a mile in length, had
been taken by some fortunate "Sambo" of the South. The girls gaped with
terror and astonishment, the men winking and trying to look grave, while
spinning these yarns, which certainly beat all the wonders of the
veracious Baron Munchausen.
The call to renew the sport broke off their ludicrous inventions. Our
fortune was as great as in the forenoon, and at sunset we returned home,
leaving the negroes to salt and pack the fish in barrels, for the supply
of the plantation.
A few days afterwards, I bade adieu to Mr Courtenay and his delightful
family, and embarked myself and horse on board of one of the steamers
bound to St. Louis, which place I reached on the following morning.
St. Louis has been described by so many travellers, that it is quite
useless to mention anything about this "queen city of the Mississippi."
I will only observe, that my arrival produced a great sensation among
the inhabitants, to whom the traders in the Far West had often told
stories about the wealth of the Shoshones. In two or three days, I
received a hundred or more applications from various speculators, "to go
and kill the Indians in the West, and take away their treasures;" and I
should have undoubtedly received ten thousand more, had I not hit upon a
good plan to rid myself of all their importunities. I merely sent all
the notes to the newspapers as fast as I received them; and it excited a
hearty laugh amongst the traders, when thirty letters appeared in the
columns, all of them written in the same tenor and style.
One evening I found at the post-office a letter from Joseph Smith
himself, in which he invited me to go to him without any loss of time,
as the state of affairs having now assumed a certain degree of
importance, it was highly necessary that we should at once come to a
common understanding. Nothing could have pleased me more than this
communication, and the next morning I started from St. Louis, arriving
before noon at St. Charles, a small town upon the Missouri, inhabited
almost entirely by French creoles, fur-traders, and trappers. There,
for the first time, I saw a steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not
understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over
before the existence of steam-boats, as, in that particular spot, the
mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity,
forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that may
come into them.
From St. Charles I crossed a hilly land, till I arrived once more upon
the Mississippi; but there "the father of the waters" (as the Indians
call it) presented an aspect entirely new: its waters, not having yet
mixed with those of the Missouri, were quite transparent; the banks,
too, were several hundred feet high, and recalled to my mind the
countries watered by the Buona Ventura River. For two days I continued
my road almost always in sight of the stream, till at last, the ground
becoming too broken and hilly, I embarked upon another steam-ferry at
Louisiana, a rising and promising village, and landed upon the shores of
Illinois, where the level prairies would allow of more rapid travelling.
The state of Missouri, in point of dimensions, is the second state of
the Union, being inferior in extent only to Virginia. It extends from
36 degrees to 40 degrees 35 minutes North latitude, and from 89 degrees
20 minutes to 95 degrees West longitude, having an area of about 68,500
square miles. Its boundaries, as fixed by the Constitution, are a line
drawn from a point in the middle of the Mississippi, in 36 degrees North
latitude, and along that parallel, west to its intersection, a meridian
line, passing through the mouth of the Kansas. Thence, the western
boundary was originally at that meridian; but, by act of Congress in
1836, the triangular tract between it and the Missouri, above the mouth
of the Kansas, was annexed to the state. On the north, the parallel of
latitude which passes through the rapids of the river Desmoines, forms
the boundary between that river and the Missouri.
The surface of that portion of the state which lies north of the
Missouri is, in general, moderately undulating, consisting of an
agreeable interchange of gentle swells and broad valleys, and rarely,
though occasionally, rugged, or rising into hills of much elevation.
With the exception of a narrow strips of woodland along the
water-courses, almost the whole of this region is prairie, at least
nine-tenths being wholly destitute of trees. The alluvial patches or
river-bottoms are extensive, particularly on the Missouri, and generally
of great fertility; and the soil of the upland is equal, if not
superior, to that of any other upland tract in the United States. The
region south of the Missouri River and west of the Osage, is of the same
description; the northern and western Missouri country is most
delightful, a soil of inexhaustible fertility and a salubrious climate,
rendering it a most desirable and pleasant residence; but south-east of
the latter river, the state is traversed by numerous ridges of the Ozark
mountains, and the surface is here highly broken and rugged.
This mountainous tract has a breadth of from one hundred to one hundred
and fifty miles; but although it often shoots up into precipitous peaks,
it is believed that they rarely exceed two thousand feet in height; no
accurate measurements of their elevation have, however, been made, and
little is known of the course and mutual relations of the chains. The
timber found here is pitch-pine, shrub oaks, cedar, etcetera, indicative
of the poverty of the soil; in the uplands of the rest of the state,
hickory, post-oak, and white oaks, etcetera, are the prevailing growth;
and in river-bottoms, the cotton tree, sycamore or button-wood, maple,
ash, walnut, etcetera, predominate. The south-eastern corner of the
state, below Cape Girardeau, and east of the Black River, is a portion
of the immense inundated region which borders the Arkansas. A
considerable part of this tract is indeed above the reach of the floods,
but these patches are isolated and inaccessible, except by boats, during
the rise of the waters.
My friend Mr Courtenay penetrated these swamps with three Indians and
two negroes. His companions were bogged and lost; he returned, having
killed seven fine elks and two buffaloes. Some of these mighty animals
have been breeding there for a long while, undisturbed by man.
The state of Missouri is abundantly supplied with navigable channels,
affording easy access to all parts. The Mississippi washes the eastern
border, by the windings of the stream, for a distance of about four
hundred and seventy miles. Above St. Genevieve, it flows for the most
part between high and abrupt cliffs of limestone, rising to an elevation
of from one hundred to four hundred feet above the surface of the river;
sometimes separated from it by bottoms of greater or less width, and at
others springing up abruptly from the water's edge. A few miles below
Cape Girardeau, and about thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Ohio,
are the rocky ledges, called the Little and Grand Chain; and about
half-way between that point and St. Genevieve, is the Grand Tower, one
of the wonders of the Mississippi. It is a stupendous pile of rocks, of
a conical form, about one hundred and fifty feet high, and one hundred
feet circumference at its base, rising up out of the bed of the river.
It seems, in connection with the rocky shores on both sides, to have
been opposed, at some former period, as a barrier to the flow of the
Mississippi, which must here have had a perpendicular fell of more than
one hundred feet.
The principal tributaries of the Mississippi, with the exception of the
Missouri, are the Desmoines, Wyacond, Fabius, Salt, and Copper Rivers,
above that great stream, and the Merrimac, St. Francis, and White River
below; the two last passing into Arkansas. Desmoines, which is only a
boundary stream, is navigable one hundred and seventy miles, and Salt
River, whose northern sources are in Iowa, and southern in Boone county,
and which takes its name from the salt licks or salines on its borders,
may be navigated by steam-boats up to Florida (a small village); that is
to say, ninety-five or a hundred miles. The Riviere au Cuivre, or
Copper River, is also a navigable stream; but the navigation of all
these rivers is interrupted by ice in winter, and by shoals and bars in
the dry season.
The Missouri river flows through the state for a distance of about six
hundred miles; but although steam-boats have ascended it two thousand
five hundred miles from its mouth, its navigation is rendered difficult
and dangerous by sand-bars, falling banks, snags, and shifting channels.
The bank of the Mississippi river, on the Illinois side, is not by far
so picturesque as the country I have just described, but its fertility
is astonishing. Consequently, the farms and villages are less
scattered, and cities, built with taste and a great display of wealth,
are found at a short distance one from the other. Quincy I may mention,
among others, as being a truly beautiful town, and quite European in its
style of structure and neatness. Elegant fountains are pouring their
cool waters at the end of every row of houses; some of the squares are
magnificent, and, as the town is situated upon a hill several hundred
feet above the river, the prospect is truly grand.
At every place where I stopped between St. Louis and Quincy, I always
heard the Mormons abused and spoken of as a set of scoundrels, but from
Quincy to Nauvoo the reports were totally different. The higher or more
enlightened classes of the people have overlooked the petty tricks of
the Mormon leaders, to watch with more accuracy the advance and designs
of Mormonism. In Joe Smith they recognise a great man, a man of will
and energy, one who has the power of carrying every thing before him,
and they fear him accordingly.
On leaving Quincy. I travelled about seventy miles through a country
entirely flat, but admirably cultivated. I passed through several
little villages, and at noon of the second day I reached my destination.