BEAVER CANALS, MEADOWS, AND TRAILS. 209 



face of the water and pointing clown stream, become 

 the "snags" which have made this river famous for 

 its steamboat disasters. 



The river banks are usually from five to eight feet 

 high when the channel is full, and always vertical. 

 Any person fiilling into this river, in time of flood, is 

 pretty certain to be drowned, unless he can reach 

 a sand-bar, or the side opiDOsite the one against which 

 the current is running.^ 



From the mouth of the Missouri to Kansas City, 

 there is a belt of forest on both sides of the river sev- 

 eral miles wide; but above this point the belt con- 

 tracts rapidly in width, the prairie coming occasion- 

 ally to the bluffs, as at Fort Leavenworth and at 

 Omaha. Above the last-named place the forest con- 

 tinues to decrease to the confluence of the Big Sioux 

 River, after which, for the remainder of the distance 

 of about two thousand miles to the mountains, it is 

 confined to the bottom lands and the declivities of the 

 bluffs. All without is open prairie, with the excep- 

 tion of narrow belts of forest along the margins of 

 the tributary streams. For the last fifteen hundred 

 miles the bottom lands are but partially wooded; and 



^ Where the channel is narrow and the current swift and full, 

 the most powerful swimmer is unable to keep himself above the 

 surface of the water, its whirling and eddying motions tending to 

 draw him under. In 18G2, 1 saw five men drown at mid-day in this 

 river just below Fort Benton, which is but thirty-six miles below 

 the Falls of the Missouri. Six men were capsized in a rapid in 

 a small boat, and were one after the other soon drawn under. 

 Of these, four came to the surface once, and again went under; 

 three came up a second time, and one a third. He alone was 

 saved, by means of a small boat, which went to their relief within 

 two minutes of the accident. 



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