136 VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 



masses of granite are conspicuous. The remains, 

 too, of ancient forests are still visible on the upper 

 grounds; hut on the lower cities have arisen, and 

 orchards and gardens cover the sites of thickly- 

 matted woods; the axe and spade have also ex- 

 tended to the distant mountains, and log-huts, and 

 cultivated fields are seen heside the sources of those 

 rivers, which swell the torrent of the Mississippi. 



Sixty nations once inhabited this splendid valley, 

 but war and intoxication have thinned them. What 

 their ancestors were we know not, yet traces are 

 still found which indicate a superior degree of civil- 

 ization, and convey the impression that a different 

 race once inhabited the banks of the Mississippi. 

 But those who have been driven from their favourite 

 resorts, into the still unsettled parts, are apparently 

 a melancholy and sullen race. They do not readily 

 sympathize with external nature, and nothing 

 but an overwhelming excitement can arouse them. 

 Their converse with woods and deserts, with the 

 roar of winds and storms, and the gloom and desola- 

 tion of the wilderness ; their seeming banishment 

 from social nature, and the sight of continual 

 encroachments made upon their hunting grounds 

 by men whom they consider as belonging to an 

 inferior race; the dangers, too, by which they 

 are surrounded, and their constant struggles to 

 maintain a precarious existence, all conduce 

 to blunt the finer feelings of their nature and to 

 impress upon their countenances a steady and un- 

 alterable gloom. Hence arise the horrors of their 

 dreadful warfare, and the cruelties practised on their 

 captives ; the alternations of hope and despair, and 



