Leaving St. Louis on the Steamer _El Paso_, we proceeded up the Mississippi twenty miles where we left this river to follow the course of another great river, the Missouri. This has in its main features a great resemblance to the Mississippi, having a chain of mountains parallel to both its shores and being sown with numberless islands like the former, the most of them nothing but sand carried down from the Rocky Mountains. The hills, however, instead of breaking off abruptly as on the Mississippi are generally sloping gradually at a height of sixty or seventy feet, toward the river bed. The country along the shores is comparatively little cultivated, the constantly washing power of the water keeping back any active efforts for agricultural improvements. A great number of quite respectable towns are met with along the river, as Alton, Washington, Jefferson, Booneville, Lexington, Independence (starting point for California, Oregon and Texas) then, Kansas and last St. Joseph. The Kansas River coming from the West, separates Missouri from the Indian Territory, the latter still peopled by the Indians as their last and only resting place in this country. The history of this great family of the human race teaches us the constant progress and retreat in the pursuit of nature's laws, the eternal relation of all things existing. This once so numerous family of red men were the sole possessors of America, over which they had extended in all directions, and several tribes had reached a high state of civilization when the country first was discovered, but as other families analogous to their own (Hindus and Malays), they retrograded by some aberration of the laws of nature and fell back into moral darkness and gradual disappearance from the face of the earth. The red men, once the masters of this vast land, had to give up their homes to give room to its present inhabitants and who knows how soon an inevitable Nemesis will strike out their existence from the Book of Nations? This territory consists of mostly fertile prairie land, of an undulating appearance offering most beautiful fields to the observer of nature's beauties. After six days' journey we arrived at St. Joseph, Missouri. After our landing was made, a most active business took place at the wharf for a few hours arising from the delivery of freight to its respective owners. Having received our little property we put it in our wagons and camped out about a half mile above the town in a valley surrounded by hills and corn fields and except for a few cold rainy days we had a good encampment and passed the time we were there in making preparation for our long journey.