266 MISSISSIPPI OHIO. 



were said to have passed the most interesting scenery in the 

 night, and there was little seen by me calculated to impart 

 pleasure or relieve the eye. The dense, and at this season, 

 gloomy vegetation on the banks and islands, reminded me of the 

 Lake of the Thousand Isles, at the opening of the St La\v- 

 rence. The turbid torrent, boiling and whirling in a thou 

 sand directions, was washing away the banks at one place, 

 and leaving depositions at another. Indian corn was seen 

 falling with masses of earth, and mingling with the stream, 

 and uprooted trees, suspended from the banks with their 

 branches under water, as if experiencing suffocation. Every 

 thing suggested to the mind desolation, and led me to think 

 this such a river as despairing man might choose for his last 

 plunge. The whole day was spent on deck, and I felt my 

 spirits sinking when we approached the mouth of the Ohio, 

 which forms a striking contrast to the Mississippi. The Ohio 

 at its junction with the Mississippi, called by the Indians &quot; the 

 Father of Waters,&quot; is broader than the parent stream, and after 

 the junction of three such rivers as the Missouri, Mississippi, 

 and Ohio, their mingled streams do not appear larger to the 

 eye than any of them singly, which arises from the depth and 

 rapidity of the united current. The same difference of colour 

 in the waters which I had remarked at the confluence of the 

 Ottawa and St Lawrence, and of Missouri and Mississippi, 

 were here perceptible. The limpid and placid Ohio, dammed 

 up by the larger stream, and resting without motion between 

 smooth and verdant banks, resembled the stillness of sleep. 

 The Mississippi was like maddened intoxication. Well might 

 the French of old, after traversing the death-like Mississippi, 

 and becoming acquainted with the Ohio, term it La Belle 

 Riviere, the beiiutiful river, a title it justly merits. For some 

 time the winding course and full stream reminded me of sailing 

 on a lake, yet the banks are monotonous, being thinly settled, 

 with the background hid from view, and but for the lovely 

 tints which autumn had imparted to the foliage, would have 

 been without much interest. On advancing up the Ohio, the 

 channel became bound by sand plains, which are covered 

 when the water is high, arid many of the banks of the nume 

 rous islands showed, by the size of the trees, the successive 



