Rock Island, July, 1846.

I have sailed upon the Mississippi, from the point where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, all the way up to the little Lake which gives it existence, and I now intend to record a description of its scenery and prominent characteristics. The literal meaning of the Chippeway word Meseeseepe is—water every where—and conveys the same idea which has been translated—father of waters. When we remember the immense extent of the valley watered by this stream and its hundred tributaries, this name must be considered as singularly expressive.

That portion of the river known as the Lower Mississippi, extends from New Orleans to the mouth of the Missouri, a distance of about twelve hundred miles. As the highway for a multitudinous number of steam vessels of every size and character, it is of incalculable importance, not only to this country but to the world; but with regard to its scenery, it affords little of an interesting character. Excepting a few rocky bluffs found some distance below Saint Louis, and in the vicinity of Natchez, both shores of the river are low, level, and covered with dense forests of cotton-wood and cypress, where the panther and the wolf roam in perfect freedom, and the eagle swoops upon its prey undisturbed by the presence of man. The banks are of an alluvial character, and as the current is exceedingly rapid, the course of the river is constantly changing. You might travel a hundred miles without finding a place sufficiently secure to land; and the water is always so very muddy that a tumbler full will always yield half an inch of the virgin soil. The surface of the stream is never placid, but for ever turbulent and full of eddies and whirlpools, as if its channel were composed of a continued succession of caverns. Snags and sawyers abound throughout its whole extent. They are taken from the shore by the rushing tide and planted in the channel quite as rapidly as the snag-vessels can extricate them from their dangerous positions.

The Lower Mississippi (always excepting the still more frantic Missouri) is probably the most dangerous and least interesting river in the world to navigate. When not in actual danger, you are likely to be so far removed from it, high and dry on a sand bar, that the annoyance, like a certain period in our national history, has a tendency to try men’s souls. The following picture of an actual scene on this portion of the great river, may be looked upon as characteristic of the whole. On your right is a series of rocky bluffs, covered with a stunted growth of trees, before you an expanse of water ten miles long and two wide, on your left an array of sand bars and islands, where lie imbedded the wrecks of some fifty steamboats, and in the more remote distance a belt of thickly wooded bottom land. On the water, passing to and fro, are a number of steamers, and immediately in the foreground a solitary sawyer and the hull of a sunken steam-boat. This is the spot which has been rightly named the Grave Yard, for hundreds of souls at different times have passed from thence into eternity. When I left the turbid and unruly bosom of the Lower Mississippi, I felt towards it as a person would naturally feel towards an old tyrant who had vainly striven to destroy him in his savage wrath. I should remark in passing that the bottom lands of this river are not wholly without inhabitants; occasionally a lonely log cabin meets the eye, which is the only home of a miserable being who obtains his living by supplying the steamers with wood. Nailed to a stump before one of these squatter residences, which stood in the centre of a small clearing, I saw a board with the following inscription,—“This farm for sale—price $1 50.” Though I could not help laughing at the unintentional wit of that sentence, it told me a melancholy tale of poverty, intemperance, and sickness, which are too often identified with the dangers of this wilderness.

I would now speak of the Upper Mississippi, and I only regret that I cannot strike the poet’s lyre, and give to this “parent of perpetual streams” an undying hymn of praise. The moment that you pass the mouth of the Missouri on your way up the Father of Waters, you seem to be entering an entirely new world, whose every feature is “beautiful exceedingly.” The shores now slope with their green verdure to the very margin of the water, which is now of a deep green color, perfectly clear, and placid as the slumber of a babe. My first view of this spot was at the twilight hour, when the time was holy, and every object that met my gaze seemed to have been baptized with an immortal loveliness. Over the point where the sun had disappeared, floated a cavalcade of golden clouds, and away to the eastward rolled on, along her clear, blue pathway, the bright, full moon, and now and then a trembling star,—the whole completely mirrored in the bosom of the softly flowing but ever murmuring stream. On my right lay a somewhat cultivated shore; on my left a flock of islands, whose heavy masses of foliage rested upon the water; and in the distance was the pleasant and picturesque town of Alton, with its church spires speaking of hope and heaven. No living creatures met my gaze, save a wild duck and her brood gliding into their shadowy home, and an occasional night-hawk as he shot through the upper air after his living food; and no sound fell upon my ear, but the jingling of a distant cow-bell and the splash of a leaping sturgeon.