level of the flat prairie ; yet the greater part of the northern third 

 of the state is far from level, and the river bottoms, though often 

 extending one or two, and in some places, five miles from the 

 Mississippi, are not infrequently broken up by highlands. Nearer 

 the centre of the state these lowlands are wider and less inter- 

 rupted in their extent. From Rock Island to Quincy, and even 

 still farther south, for a distance of over two hundred miles, bluffs 

 do not form the shores of the Mississippi, except at intervals 

 widely separated and for short distances. In many places the 

 banks are formed simply of the washed out edges of great prairies 

 that extend for many miles into the state. Often while the banks 

 themselves are low, at varying distances from the water the 

 ground rises in rounded hillocks or ridges, or masses of limestone 

 jut out above the surface and form sharp cliffs, all known under 

 the general name "bluff." Between the bluffs and the river the 

 ground is generally low, moist and often swampy. Such lowlands 

 along the great river are from a few rods to ten miles in width 

 and, of course, many more in length. Similar, though less ex- 

 tensive lowlands, are found along Rock River, Illinois River and 

 other lesser streams, and along the Iowa side of the Mississippi. 

 Not all of these river bottoms are swampy, some are reached only 

 by unusually great freshets and are very valuable as farm lands, 

 the soil being the richest loam, others, but little elevated above 

 the usual level of the water, are overflowed by every rise and may 

 be not only swampy but dotted here and there with ponds, some 

 of which are of quite large size. Sometimes these ponds unite, 

 retain a permanent connection with the stream and, at low water, 

 flow towards it with a slow current, forming what are called " run- 

 ning sloughs." Wherever the lowlands are flooded only at long 

 intervals, or only every spring, when the stream is at its highest 

 level, they are usually covered with forests which are made up of 

 trees of large size and are singularly free from undergrowth. In 

 midsummer, after the spring floods, when the ground has dried, a 

 carriage may be driven through these forests for miles with very 

 little inconvenience from bushes, or indeed from any obstacle. It 

 is not easy to imagine such forests as ever formed of young trees, 

 they seem to have always been large and old and stately as now. 

 True temples of nature are they — the ground smooth and turf- 

 covered as if carefully prepared for crowds of worshippers— the 



