two rocky bluffs, and the face of the country is somewhat different.  The channel of the Upper Ohio lies between hills, which frequently approach the mamelle form, and are covered with a heavy growth of timber.  Where the hills or bluffs do not rise immediately from the river, but recede some distance, the space between the river and the hill is called bottom land, from the circumstance of its being overflown annually; or having at some former period formed part of the river’s bed, which is indicated by the nature of the soil.  The bluffs and bottoms invariably alternate; and when you have bluffs on one side, you are sure to have bottom on the other.  The windings are extremely uniform, with few exceptions, curving in a serpentine form in so regular a manner, that the Indians always calculated the distance by the number of bends.

“The Falls” are improperly so termed, as this obstruction is nothing more than a gradual descent for a distance of about a mile and a half, where the water, forcing its way over a rugged rocky bottom, presents the appearance of a rapid.  Below this the country is of various aspects—­hills, bottom-land, and high rocky bluffs; and towards the mouth, cotton-wood trees, (populus angulata), and cane brakes, are interspersed along the banks.  The junction of these two noble rivers, the Ohio and Mississippi, is really a splendid sight—­the scenery is picturesque, and the water at the point of union is fully two miles broad.

The Mississippi[10] is in length, from its head waters to the balize in the gulf of Mexico, about two thousand three hundred miles, and flows through an immense variety of country.  The section through which it passes, before its junction with the Missouri, is represented as being elegantly diversified with woodlands, prairies, and rich bottoms, and the banks are lined with a luxuriant growth of plants and flowers.  Before reaching the Missouri, the water of the Mississippi is perfectly limpid; but, from the mouth of that river it becomes turgid and muddy—­flows through a flat, inundated country, and seems more like an immense flood, than an old and deep-channelled river.  As far as great things can be compared to small, it much resembles, within its banks, the Rhone when flooded, as it sweeps through the department of Vaucluse, after its junction with the Saone.

From St. Louis to New Orleans, a distance of twelve hundred miles, there are but six elevated points—­the four Chickesaw bluffs, the Iron banks, and the Walnut hills.  Numerous islands are interspersed through this river; and from the mouth of the Ohio, tall cotton-wood trees and cane-brakes grow in immense quantities along the banks; the latter, being evergreens, have a pleasing effect in the winter season.  The windings of the Mississippi are, like those of the Ohio, constant, but not so serpentine, and some of them are of immense magnitude.  You traverse every point of the compass in your passage up or down:  for example, there is a bend near Bayou Placquamine, the length of which by the water is upwards of sixty miles, and from one point to the other across the distance is but three.