CHAP. XXXV.] SCENERY ON THE OHIO. 201 



snatching up an article of our luggage, while the clerk ushered 

 us over the plank into a brilliantly lighted saloon. The change 

 of scene to travelers who had been roughing it for several days 

 under a humble roof, talking with trappers about the watery wil 

 derness of the &quot; sunk country,&quot; and who had just stepped out of 

 a dark half-furnished wharf-boat, was more like the fiction of a 

 fairy tale, than a real incident in an ordinary journey. Some 

 musicians were playing at one end of the room, which was 150 

 feet long, and a gay young party from New Orleans were danc 

 ing a quadrille. At the other end we were delighted to see a 

 table covered with newspapers, for we were nearly a week in 

 arrear of news, and their columns were filled with the recent de 

 bates of the English House of Commons. There were also many 

 articles reprinted from the best European periodicals, quarterly 

 and monthly, besides those published in New England and New 

 York. Nor were any of the advantages afforded by this floating 

 palace more like an eastern tale of enchantment, than the thought, 

 as we went to our berths, that before we rose next morning to 

 breakfast we should be transported more than a hundred miles on 

 our route northward against the current of a mighty river. 



March 29. Passed Cairo in the night, and next morning 

 were at Smithland on the Ohio, at the mouth of the Cumber 

 land Hiver, having Kentucky on our right hand, and Illinois on 

 the left. Limestone cliffs, bounding the valley, were a welcome 

 sight, after the eye had been dwelling for so many weeks on flat 

 and level regions. Although we had not yet ascended the river 

 to a height of much more than 200 feet above the level of the 

 sea, the climate had changed, and we were told that snow had 

 fallen the day before. We observed that the red-bud, or Judas- 

 tree, was not yet in flower. 



On reaching the mouth of the Wabash River, which divides Illi 

 nois from Indiana, I learnt that when the ice breaks up there in 

 the spring, it is often packed into such masses that, before melt 

 ing, they float down with gravel frozen on to them as far as New 

 Madrid. This fact may explain the coarseness of the materials 

 observable in the shoals of the Mississippi, at low water, near 

 Natchez, and still farther down ; and may perhaps throw light 



i* 



