450 INTRODUCTION. 



As the only account of the journey from New 

 York to St. Louis which can now be found is 

 contained in a letter to my uncle Mr. James Hall, 

 dated St. Louis, March 29, 1843, the following 

 extract is given : — 



" The weather has been bad ever since we left Baltimore. 

 There we encountered a snow-storm that accompanied us 

 all the way to this very spot, and at this moment the 

 country is whitened with this precious, semi-congealed, 

 heavenly dew. As to ice ! — I wish it were all in your ice- 

 house when summer does come, should summer show her 

 bright features in the year of our Lord 1843. We first 

 encountered ice at Wheeling, and it has floated down the 

 Ohio all around us, as well as up the Mississippi to pleas- 

 ant St. Louis. And such a steamer as we have come in 

 from Louisville here ! — the very filthiest of all filthy old 

 rat-traps I ever travelled in ; and the fare worse, certainly 

 much worse, and so scanty withal that our worthy com- 

 mander could not have given us another meal had we been 

 detained a night longer. I wrote a famous long letter to 

 my Lucy on the subject, and as I know you will hear it, 

 will not repeat the account of our situation on board the 

 ' Gallant ' — a pretty name, too, but alas ! her name, like 

 mine, is only a shadow, for as she struck a sawyer ^ one 

 night we all ran like mad to make ready to leap overboard ; 

 but as God would have it, our lives and the 'Gallant,' 

 were spared — she from sinking, and we from swim- 

 ming amid rolling and crashing hard ice. THE LADIES 

 screamed, the babies squalled, the dogs yelled, the steam 

 roared, the captain (who, by the way, is a very gallant 



1 A fallen tree that rests on the root end at the bottom of a stream 

 or river, and sways up or down with the current. 



