410 Expedition to the 



drained off less rapidly than it falls. After raging with great 

 violence for a short time the storm ceased; but the darkness 

 was so intense, that we did not arrive at the settlement, 

 where we proposed to lodge, until a late hour in the night. 



Soon after crossing the Missouri, we had ascended so far 

 as to reach the general level of the great woodless plain, and 

 after travelling a few miles, we found the surface sloping to 

 the northeast towards the Mississippi. In the afternoon, we 

 crossed the Darden which enters the Mississippi eight miles 

 above the mouth of the Illinois, and on the following morn- 

 ing the Cuivre, tributary to the same river, ten miles above 

 the other. The point between the Missouri and Mississippi, 

 near their confluence, is raised in the highest parts, prubably 

 less than one hundred and fifty feet above the water table. 

 It is of a deep and fine soil, which would appear rather to 

 have subsided from the waters of a quiet ocean, than to 

 have been brought down from above, and deposited in its 

 present situation by the rivers. Between the sources of the 

 streams which descend from either side of this narrow cape, 

 extends an irregular tongue of land, destitute of timber, and 

 every where nearly of the same elevation; as if it had been 

 a part of the great plain, left naked at the retiring of the 

 ocean, and in which the vast vallies of the Missouri and 

 Mississippi, had since been excavated by the operations of 

 those streams. The smaller rivers of this region, appear, both 

 in extent and direction, to have been wholly independent of 

 any peculiar conformation of the original surface, on which 

 they commenced their course, and their present beds gradu- 

 ally deepening and descending in the nearest direction, to- 

 wards the vallies of the great rivers, are in every respect 

 such as we may suppose to have resulted from the wearing 

 away of a great and uniform plain. At a house where we 

 rested in the middle of the day, and which was in the high- 

 est part of the country between the Missouri and Missibsip- 

 pi, here sixty miles distant from each other, a well had been 



