The Missouri River traverses the entire State of Missouri in winding, turbid current from west to east. It passes Jefferson City, the State Capital, having about seven thousand people, and just below receives the Osage River coming up from the southwest. At Chillicothe to the northwest is buried Nelson Kneiss, who composed the music for Thomas Dunn English's popular ballad of _Ben Bolt_; and at Florida, to the northeast, was born in November, 1835, the humorist, Samuel L. Clemens, _Mark Twain_. Captain Sellers, who furnished river news to the New Orleans _Picayune_, had used this _nom-de-plume_, and dying in 1863, Clemens adopted it. Twenty miles above St. Louis the Missouri flows into the Mississippi, contributing the greater volume of water to the joint stream, the clear Mississippi waters, pushed over to the eastern bank, refusing for a long distance below to mingle with the turbid flood of the Missouri. THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. The Mississippi River below the Moline Rapids at Rock Island passes various flourishing cities, including Muscatine and Burlington, the former having considerable trade in timber and food products, while Burlington, a much larger place, spreads back from the bluffs and is a busy railroad city, fronted by a beautiful reach of the river. About thirty miles below, on the Illinois shore, is Nauvoo, a small town chiefly raising grapes and wine, but formerly one of the leading settlements on the river. This town was originally built by the Mormons under the lead of their prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1838, after they had been driven from various places in New York, Ohio and Missouri. Nauvoo flourished greatly, reaching fifteen thousand population, but dissensions arose and the enmity of the growing population elsewhere caused riots, in one of which, in 1844, Smith, who had been arrested and taken to jail at Carthage, Illinois, was killed. Brigham Young then assumed leadership, and in 1845 removed the colony over to the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, finally migrating to the Great Salt Lake in Utah, two years later. Below Nauvoo are the Lower Rapids of the Mississippi, extending twelve miles to Keokuk, a beautiful city built partly along the river, but mostly on the summit of the bluffs, here rising one hundred and fifty feet. Keokuk was a noted Indian chief, his name meaning the "watchful fox." Des Moines River, forming the boundary between Iowa and Missouri, flows in at the lower edge of the city, having come down from the northwest and passing the Iowa State Capital, Des Moines, at the head of navigation, where there is a population of sixty thousand and extensive manufactures. This city has a magnificent Capitol, erected at a cost of $3,000,000, and its prosperity is largely due to the extensive coal measures of the neighborhood. It has grown around the site of the former frontier outpost of Fort Des Moines, built in the early days for protection against the Sioux. Below are Quincy, Hannibal and