that this period is forwarded or retarded as the rivers thaw sooner or later, which may reconcile these apparently discordant statements. The Ohio is then swelled to a prodigious height, varying in different places, as it is more or less expanded in breadth. It is a favorable circumstance for the country in the upper course of the Ohio, that it has very high and steep banks; having gradually hollowed out for itself a deep and comparatively narrower bed, being, like all its southern tributary streams, inclosed as it were in a groove between them, which prevents the general level of the land from being overflowed for many miles, and thereby rendered marshy and unwholesome, as in the lower Missouri, and in the lower part of the Ohio. Yet high as these banks are, the Ohio is both a dangerous and troublesome neighbor to the towns which are not sufficiently far removed from them. That part of the town of Marietta situated at the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio, though elevated forty-five feet above the ordinary level of the stream, has been twice inundated, and consequently abandoned by the inhabitants. The town of Portsmouth, at the mouth of the Great Sciota, and two hundred and eighteen miles below Marietta by water, though elevated sixty feet above the usual surface of the river, is also subjected to the same misfortune, which has materially affected the prosperity of the place. At Cincinnati, the breadth of the river is five hundred and thirty-five yards, and the banks fifty feet in perpendicular height, yet these are annually overflowed. The winter floods commence in the middle of October, and continue to the latter end of December. Sometimes, in the course of the summer, abundant rains fall among the Alleghany Mountains, by which the Ohio is suddenly raised, but such occurrences are rare. In the times of these two periodical floods, which taken together last for near half the year, ships drawing twelve feet water may sail with perfect ease from Pittsburg to New Orleans, a distance of near two thousand and two hundred miles. In these seasons the passage to the falls may be accomplished in nine or ten days, but it is generally effected in twelve days. The difficulty of navigating the Ohio during the dry season, is only confined to the upper part of its course, or between Pittsburg and Limestone, a space of four hundred and twenty-five miles by water; and this, not so much owing to the shallowness of the stream, as to its being divided by islands; for the depth of the Monongahela branch of the Ohio alone, at Pittsburg, is twelve feet. Michaux counted no less than fifty of these islands in the distance of three hundred and ninety miles; some of them only containing a few acres, and others exceeding a mile in length.