Wednesday morning, December 29th, I discovered that the river had risen two feet during the night, and the stump of the tree to which I had moored my boat was submerged.  The river was wide and the banks covered with heavy forests, with clearings here and there, which afforded attractive vistas of prairies in the background.  I passed a bold, stratified crag, covered with a little growth of cedars.  These adventurous trees, growing out of the crevices of the rock, formed a picturesque covering for its rough surface.  A cavern, about thirty feet in width, penetrated a short distance into the rock.  This natural curiosity bore the name of “Cave-in-Rock,” and was, in 1801, the rendezvous of a band of outlaws, who lived by plundering the boats going up and down the river, oftentimes adding the crime of murder to their other misdeeds.  Just below the cliff nestled a little village also called “Cave-in-Rock.”

Wild birds flew about me on all sides, and had I cared to linger I might have had a good bag of game.  This was not, however, a gunning cruise, and the temptation was set aside as inconsistent with the systematic pulling which alone would take me to my goal.  The birds were left for my quondam friends of the shanty-boat, they being the happy possessors of more time than they could well handle, and the killing of it the aim of their existence.

The soft shores of alluvium were constantly caving and falling into the river, bringing down tons of earth and tall forest-trees.  The latter, after freeing their roots of the soil, would be swept out into the stream as contributions to the great floating raft of drift-wood, a large portion of which was destined to a long voyage, for much of this floating forest is carried into the Gulf of Mexico, and travels over many hundreds of miles of salt water, until it is washed up on to the strands of the isles of the sea or the beaches of the continent.

Having tied up for the night to a low bank, with no thought of danger, it was startling, to say the least, to have an avalanche of earth from the bank above deposit itself upon my boat, so effectually sealing down my hatch-cover that it seemed at first impossible to break from my prison.  After repeated trials I succeeded in dislodging the mass, and, thankful to escape premature interment, at once pushed off in search of a better camp.

A creek soon appeared, but its entrance was barred by a large tree which had fallen across its mouth.  My heavy hatchet now proved a friend in need, and putting my boat close to the tree, I went systematically to work, and soon cut out a section five feet in length.  Entering through this gateway, my labors were rewarded by finding upon the bank some dry fence-rails, with which a rude kitchen was soon constructed to protect me from the wind while preparing my meal.  The unusual luxury of a fire brightened the weird scene, and the flames shot upward, cheering the lone voyager and frightening the owls and coons from their accustomed lairs.  The strong current had been of great assistance, for that night my log registered sixty-two miles for the day’s row.