FACE OF THE COUNTRY ALTON. 255 



The building was founded on rock, and stones might have 

 been had for the upper stories, by laying a plank from the 

 building to the rock on the rising bank. 



The purpose of my present excursion was to view the 

 prairie in the neighbourhood of St Charles, at the foot of the 

 Mamelles, so beautifully described by Mr Flint, wliose account 

 is given as a quotation in Mr Stuart s &quot; Three Years Resi 

 dence in America.&quot; The description excited my imagination 

 at the time of first reading it, and was imprinted on my 

 memory till effaced by seeing the object before me. St 

 Charles is about twenty-six miles from Alton, and as there 

 was no regular conveyance between the places, I did not 

 regret the necessity of walking, which would afford me an 

 opportunity of traversing the narrow neck of land, separating 

 two of the largest rivers before their junction in the most 

 fertile and extensive valley on earth, as well as of examining 

 the modern paradise of my imagination. 



The road from Alton to St Charles passes up the west 

 bank of the Mississippi for above a mile, and for ten or twelve 

 through its densely wooded bottoms, at no great distance from 

 the river before the prairie is reached. On attaining the 

 opposite side of the ferry, the exuberant and varied vegetation 

 excited my admiration, and far surpassed every thing I had 

 seen on the banks of the Illinois and its tributaries. The 

 height and circumference of the trees are immense, and such 

 was the rankness of vegetation, that I culled several leaves 

 from young shoots of the button-wood two feet in length. 

 The climbing plants were in proportion to the rest of the 

 vegetable family, reaching the summits of the most gigantic 

 trees ; sometimes three species \vere clinging to the same 

 trunk, and seemed vying with each other in richness and 

 beauty. The vines particularly attracted my notice. This plant 

 is common in most parts of North America, and its foliage is 

 beautiful in the neighbourhood of Montreal. Here the stem 

 of the vine was occasionally seen nearly a foot in diameter,, 

 issuing from the earth twenty or thirty feet from the root of 

 the tree which supported its branches, and stretching seventy 

 or eighty feet before coming in contact with the trunk, form 

 ing, together with its supporter, a striking representation 



