246 THE ILLINOIS. [1764. 



cries of savages, never silent in that wilderness, — 

 it holds its angry course through sun-scorched 

 deserts, among towers and palaces, the architecture 

 of no human hand, among lodges of barbarian 

 hordes, and herds of bison blackening the prairie 

 to the horizon. Fierce, reckless, headstrong, ex- 

 ulting in its tumultuous force, it plays a thousand 

 freaks of wanton power ; bearing away forests 

 from its shores, and planting them, with roots up- 

 permost, in its quicksands; sweeping off islands, 

 and rebuilding them ; frothing and raging in foam 

 and whirlpool, and, again, gliding with dwindled 

 current along its sandy channel. At length, dark 

 with uncurbed fury, it pours its muddy tide into 

 the reluctant Mississippi. That majestic river, 

 drawing life from the pure fountains of the north, 

 wandering among emerald prairies and wood- 

 crowned bluffs, loses all its earlier charm with 

 this unhallowed union. At first, it shrinks as 

 with repugnance ; and along the same channel 

 the two streams flow side by side, with unmingled 

 waters. But the disturbing power prevails at 

 length ; and the united torrent bears onward in its 

 might, boiling up from the bottom, whirling in 

 many a vortex, flooding its shores with a malign 

 deluge fraught wdth pestilence and fever, and 

 burying forests in its depths, to insnare the heed- 

 less voyager. Mightiest among rivers, it is the. 

 connecting link of adverse climates and contrasted 

 races ; and, while at its northern source the fur- 

 clad Indian shivers in the cold, where it mingles 

 with the ocean, the growth of the tropics springs 



